“Regretting You” tries to do a little bit of everything, making a film that was entertaining in the moment, but easy to regret once the credits started rolling.
The popular movie adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel, “Regretting You”, was released on Oct. 24 and has garnered some negative reviews and thoughts from the audience. This film features a mother and daughter grieving the loss of a supposedly devoted husband and father, and an equally close sister and aunt. As time goes on, betrayals are revealed, and each revelation further complicates the grief.
The adults had the better storyline because it was engaging and somewhat unique to the plot of the movie. Their actions were much more relatable and human-like. There was much more life to the characters as demonstrated when Morgan, the mother, starts to sleep on the couch, or when Jonah, the father’s best friend, is overwhelmed and leaves, and Clara has to get him back.
On the other hand, the plot of the teenagers was boring and felt irrelevant to the book’s main idea. While giving Morgan a daughter added to the plot’s complexity, giving the daughter her own romance with the character Miller was unnecessary and added little to the plot.
Although the film Miller makes for Clara at the end induced second-hand embarrassment, it was a sweet addition to the movie. That being said, it seemed unnecessary to the plot, and did not end the movie well. The movie would have been stronger if it had ended with wrapping up the adult plot, instead of the teenagers, which felt like a subplot.
The plot itself was meant to be very shocking, with a new “bomb” dropping every 30 minutes, but many of these twists were predictable, especially with so many hints at what the next one would be. It felt like it was just a compilation of other stories, and that made it feel predictable. It seemed as if all the shocking things that usually happen in plots were happening in this one, so the plot felt more theatrical than realistic.
The movie did lean into the rom-com feel. The movie was quite funny, and there were romantic elements, and it was nice to have some humor to break up the heavier plot. Many moments were improved by bringing contrast to a difficult moment with some humor. All the actors had good comedic timing, and their fitting into stereotypes was conducive to the humor element.
This movie cannot escape the comparison with “It Ends With Us” since it was the same author who wrote the original book, and the movies had similar feels. This movie is definitely better than that one. The plot is more engaging, and the characters are more relatable and well-developed.
However, the characters fit into stereotypes and did not have a deeper side. Morgan and her daughter, Clara, in particular. Morgan felt like the stereotypical overprotective mom, and Clara felt like the stereotypical rebellious teenager. They did not feel realistic because they were put into a box so much.
Likewise, many of the actors were a bit melodramatic, but some of this was just a natural consequence of the plot being so theatrical. Mason Thames (Miller) and Allison Williams (Morgan) had good moments, though the script often forced both to be over the top. But Mckenna Grace (Clara) and Dave Franco (Jonah) both played their characters as annoying and unlike real people.
While sitting in the theatre, the film seemed impressive and joyful. However, after leaving and thinking about it more, it became clearer that there were plenty of plot-filling moments in order to make the film seem more interesting. Instead, it just felt like they were filling the time. The story itself had a lot of material to work with, but they did not use it effectively. Overall, we would rate this movie a 4/10.
