For It Is Man's Number: sam morelos

Showing posts with label sam morelos. Show all posts

Thursday, 29 January 2026

Regretting You (2025)

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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Tuesday, 23 September 2025

Summer Of 69 (2025)

I know this may seem like a strange thing to say, especially coming from someone as far away from their teen years as I am now, but there have been some absolutely fantastic teen comedies released over the past few years. One or two have been noticed, but a couple of them seem to have been sadly overlooked or ignored. Incoming is one that I tried to bring some attention to a few months ago. Summer Of 69 is the one I am recommending today.

As the school year comes to an end, Abby (Sam Morelos) decides that it's time to get what she wants. And what she wants is Max (Matt Cornett). She figures she can get Max by giving him what he wants, which is the sexual pleasure of a 69, apparently. The only problem is that Abby is not experienced in sexual matters, at all. So she hires a stripper/escort (Santa Monica, played by Chloe Fineman) who she believes can teach her all she needs to know. She's going to offer $20,000, which will give Santa Monica the money she needs to stop her workplace being sold to a sleazy new owner (Charlie Day).

The feature directorial debut of Jillian Bell, who has spent most of her career in a variety of comedy roles in films covering an entire range from awful to great, Summer Of 69 has a great cast of characters, a load of references to other teen movies (and, considering the main premise, it has particular fun with Risky Business moments), and, most importantly, plenty of laughs. Bell also co-wrote the screenplay with Jules Byrne and Liz Nico, and the end result is a very clever use of teen movie tropes to create that strangely brilliant blend of the lewd and the sweet that some of the best teen movies have.

The cast all help a lot, particularly Morelos in the lead role. She may not have been in the business long, relatively speaking, but this is the kind of performance that should have her actively pursued by those wanting to make use of her comedic skills. She's great at delivering the dialogue, keeping a straight face in the middle of a load of absurdity (the film has her character often disappearing into daydreams as she considers her plans), and fully committing to the moments that are all about physical comedy as her awkwardness clashes against her attempts to learn how to be sexy. Fineman is very good alongside Morelos, and she's allowed to be a mix of strong exterior and vulnerable interior, allowing her to embody the standard teacher who also has to learn a lesson or two of her own. Cornett is allowed to play his desirable male without being a complete pig, helped by the fact that he spends most of the movie unaware of how Abby feels about him. Day is a lot of fun as a sleazy pig, Paula Pell is very funny as Betty Spaghetti, Natalie Morales is decent as a woman who seems to be everything that Santa Monica isn't, and Fernando Carsa is very amusing and entertaining as someone who can offer advice to everyone at the school while he's hidden underneath a large team mascot outfit.

I smiled all the way through this, even though here were some minor things I could pick at (look, I'm not being a perv, but it's strange to see films that feature strippers, or a strip club, in so many scenes without having any of the strippers actually looking as if they take their tops off . . . but that's what you get when the film isn't all about indulging the male gaze, which is as understandable as it is unbelievable). The 101-minute runtime feels perfect, the soundtrack has some excellent choices (including a track at the end of the film that references another classic teen movie), and it's heartwarming to see the lessons being learned by the two leads, especially when viewers are often one or two steps ahead of them.

I really cannot think of who would dislike this. It has clever gags, it has clever dumb gags, it has an entertaining ebb and flow between sexual honesty and naivety, and Morelos and Fineman work as well together as any other two comedy leads I can think of. Get to it when you want a good laugh. If you end up disappointed then I'll throw out my fluffy animal costume and refrain from offering any more movie advice to those who metaphorically sit down beside me.

9/10