Another romantic drama based on a novel from Colleen Hoover, who seems to be quite the hot commodity when it comes to movie adaptations at the moment, Regretting You is a film that I didn't entirely dislike, but I couldn't fully enjoy. I tried to figure out exactly what the film was doing to turn me off, but I couldn't out my finger on it. Then it struck me. This is a film focused on a couple of teens that spends far too much of the runtime also showing us the lives of the adults. And it almost infantilises those adults, turning them into people simply cosplaying their own teen storylines alongside the actual teens.
Mckenna Grace is Clara Grant, daughter of Morgan (Allison Williams) and Chris (Scott Eastwood). Clara is going through some standard teen stuff, although that now includes an interesting development after an encounter with Miller Adams (Mason Thames), but she doesn't always want to confide in her mother. That's why she is happy to also have her Aunt Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald), who appears to be happily married to Jonah (Dave Franco). Happiness is fleeting though, and Clara has her world turned upside-down when her father and her aunt both die in a car crash, creating a lot of pain and a need to reframe every memory held by Clara, Morgan, and Joshua.
Directed by Josh Boone (who has, let's say, mixed results throughout his filmography), this is standard stuff for anyone who knows what they're getting into. If you're familiar with Colleen Hoover, or if you've seen any of the films based on the works of Nicholas Sparks, then you'll know the mix of melodrama and gentle humour here. Whatever is happening is always BIG, it's love and hate stuff, life and death, and there are many silver linings to be seen amidst the gathering stormclouds.
Writer Susan McMartin struggles to adapt material that may well work better on the page, considering the time jump that starts things off and the frankly bizarre relationship complications that we watch playing out, but at least the younger cast members make the most of things.
Both Grace and Thames are performers I have enjoyed watching over the past few years, and seeing them used as nominal leads here is more satisfying than anything else in the film. Both do well with what they're given, and they get on with one another in a way that feels impressively natural. Williams is decent enough in her role, and certainly does much better work than Franco, Fitzgerald, or Eastwood, and there's another bonus point here for giving supporting roles to wonderful relative newcomer Sam Morelos and wonderful old-timer Clancy Brown.
Watch this in the right frame of mind, or in the right company, and you might appreciate the emotions of it all, the moments that have characters acting cute, and the infrequent laughs. Watch it in a bad mood though and you'll probably struggle to stop yourself from smashing your screen, particularly during the many times things slow right down to show Franco brooding more, either in the foreground or loitering behind another character he seems unable to be honest with.
5/10
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