Why should death stop a mediocre romance? In fact, how about two of each? Yeah, you heard right: Two deaths. Two mediocre romances. At least we got rid of the characters we didn’t like, right? Or … the ones we liked less, at least. I think.
It is not great movie making to have a bonfire teen announce her pregnancy and immediately jump to seventeen years later to see what the pregnancy has become (a teenage girl). Why was this not great movie making? Because before showing the teen in question, Clara (Mckenna Grace), the film superimposed the title “Regretting You” as if to imply this is the big regret. At no point in the film does mom, Morgan (Allison Williams), ever regret having Clara, hence the title placement is both deceiving and off-putting, a rare double.
How do you screw up a title?
Two sisters, Morgan and Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) marry two best friends, Chris (Scott Eastwood) and Jonah (Dave Franco), respectively. Although it is clear to us when Morgan confesses she’s pregnant that both couples are mismatched. Oh well, too late now, right? Seventeen years later, Jonah has just re-entered the picture and he and Jenny are married with a baby. Meanwhile, the ambitious Clara has set her sights on Miller (Mason Thames), one of those guys that movies find edgy, but in reality he’s tame as a kitten. We are introduced to Miller making the “bad boy” move of replanting the city limits sign so that pizza will deliver to his house. So.many.questions. Starting with: “Do you really think that’s gonna work?” I mean, the pizza place says, “We don’t deliver outside the city.” And you respond with, “Did you check where the city ends?” and then, what? Expect to hear, “OH NO! Our mistake, we WILL deliver to your house!” As if GPS doesn’t exist wherever we are in the world.
Why do I care? I mean, you gotta think about something when nothing is happening on the screen; why not that? And a whole lot of nothing happens while we wait an endless turn for the plot to arrive. And now it’s too late in the film to describe what happens without spoiling the darn
thing. It’s your own fault, Regretting You; if your Act I were sharper, I’d be able to sing your praises without censorship. At this point, it seems like I hated this stupid film. Oh well.
Ok, so what made this film worth seeing? Unfortunately, it happens late in Act III. There is a birthday dinner in which every remaining cast member feels obliged to show up, and they all have dirt on one another, and are not afraid to bring it up. I usually do not enjoy cringe and I usually do not enjoy deliberately dressing down familiar characters, and yet, something about this scene got me wide awake and cheering for Regretting You. Did it sway me from “No” to “Yes?” No. This was definitely a case of too-little-too-late and, boy, asking somebody to love any one of these people is a tall order. We feel for them because they lost people they love and the ugly circumstances in which they lost them, BUT, noe of these folks has much in the endearing part by themselves.
In the general idiot romance genre, Regretting You is a little better than your average Nicholas Sparks adaptation, but I loathe Sparks adaptations, so that’s quite a low bar to clear. If you are a sucker for romance and tragedy, like if the average retelling of Romeo and Juliet makes you cry, well, you might love this film. For the rest of us, romance works best when you fall in love with the people falling in love on screen. I didn’t fall in love with anybody here. Well, what did I expect? The title sounds like a classic safety school dis.
Clara really loves Miler, you can bet
And her mother’s romance is now set
So riddle me, dig —
When these gals both scored big
Why the title of the film includes “Regret”
Rated PG-13, 116 Minutes
Director: Josh Boone
Writer: Colleen Hoover, Susan McMartin
Genre: Romance for dummies
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Suckers for romance and/or family drama
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “Why did you put ‘regret’ in the freaking title?”
