Miscommunication and secret-keeping are two of cinema’s greatest tools in building tension and drama. But sometimes over-reliance on these big moments of revelation can be a symptom of shallow storytelling. Josh Boone’s Regretting You, with its characters’ refusal to communicate, exposes how these two things can fail even the most interesting of concepts when nothing else of substance is offered.
★★☆☆☆
Based on the novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover, Regretting You has all the potential in the world to be a romantic comedy classic. It boasts a star-studded line-up led by Mason Thames and McKenna Grace, and supported by Dave Franco, Allison Williams, Willa Fitzgerald, and Scott Eastwood. The premise is also the gripping sort, centring on fate, unrequited love, and the notion of “what ifs”. What if things were different? What if people made a different choice? What if life never got in the way? There’s an allure to all these questions that makes for great love stories. But Regretting You sadly does not live up to its full potential.
The film follows Clara (Grace), whose world completely shatters when her father, Chris (Eastwood), and aunt, Jenny (Fitzgerald), die in a car crash. She has a difficult relationship with her over-protective mother, Morgan (Williams), one where both keep secrets from each other. With the breakdown of her home life, she finds comfort in Miller (Thames), a boy from school whose dad’s reputation precedes him, adding another layer that creates a further rift between mother and daughter. Left with the wreckage of the deaths and the sudden discovery of her sister and husband’s affair, Morgan decides to keep everything from Clara in hopes of protecting her image of the two people she loved the most. Meanwhile, Jonah (Franco), the father of Jenny’s child, is also coming to terms with his partner’s death and deceit.
Regretting You tries to emulate more than just a cute and romantic teen affair between Miller and Clara. There’s a coming-of-age edge to it, and also plenty of family drama. However, none of these are executed well in the story. Thames and Grace’s chemistry is a little off, a bit clumsy and awkward, and difficult to invest in. The film attempts to endear the audience to its two leads, with Thames putting on a charming performance. However, the overall result is flat, specifically on Grace’s end, whose acting here is wholly unconvincing.
As far as the coming-of-age angle for Regretting You is concerned, it does echo a similar treatment of its protagonist to The Edge of Seventeen; one where the main character is deeply flawed and unlikable, yet still evokes sympathy from the audience. But Clara doesn’t have the same spark that Hailee Steinfeld’s Nadine has. The script itself doesn’t carry the nuance and depth that a character like this needs to make them work either.
The family aspect also takes a backseat to the rekindling romance between Jonah and Morgan. While the pair have better chemistry than their younger counterparts, Franco and Williams still don’t hold enough heat and passion to fully convince the audience that this is a grand love story with plenty of sexual tension. Their earlier dynamic, full of longing looks and questions of regret, holds more emotional weight. This is entirely counterproductive to the piece’s efforts to course-correct these characters’ lives. It solidifies the sentiment that sometimes people don’t end up together for the better. Sometimes, that “what if” is better staying a “what if”.
Aside from the execution of its premise—the car crash that reveals this secret affair between Chris and Jenny—nothing much else happens in the feature. It meanders with sugar-coated love montages and Morgan’s efforts to move on. This is a detriment to its tackling of the complexity of grief, specifically regarding Chris and Jenny’s misdeeds. The one thing making the runtime longer is this constant insistence on secrecy and miscommunication between mother and daughter. Still, Regretting You doesn’t centre the relationship between Morgan and Clara in any meaningful manner. Their misunderstandings and dancing around each other don’t achieve a decent resolution, nor do their character arcs converge for a more fulfilling denouement.
The Verdict
Regretting You has its moments. It’s cheesy and sweet, but not at all a convincing love story. There are parts of it that are enjoyable, and others less so. The performances are often subpar, with Thames the only one truly standing out. The lack of convincing character development undermines its efforts to be a coming-of-age story. Regretting You is an overall bland film with surface-level coverage of its themes—and nothing else to show for it.
Words by Mae Trumata