I want to begin by saying that I don’t fully understand Colleen Hoover’s whole thing. I’ve never read any of her massively popular novels, and I left the first feature adaptation of one of them (last year’s beleaguered It Ends With Us) with an unmoved shoulder shrug. And yet, I love to see a mid-budget drama for adults succeed in today’s depressing marketplace. So for that reason, I decided to give the Colleen Hoover adaptation another shot when Josh Boone’s adaptation of Regretting You hit theaters this weekend. After seeing the film, I can confidently say it works more than It Ends With Us, and I can also say that maybe Colleen Hoover just isn’t for me. 

Morgan (Allison Williams) is married to her high school sweetheart Chris (Scott Eastwood), and they’ve been friends with Jonah (Dave Franco) and Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) for years. Morgan has trouble connecting to her 16-year-old daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace), who has a blossoming romance with Miller (Mason Thames), described as the coolest guy in school. Suddenly, Chris and Jenny are killed in a car accident, forcing the surviving characters to confront uncomfortable truths that could alter their relationships forever.

All of the conflict in Regretting You could be avoided if these characters spoke to each other like human beings instead of the most basic kind of soap opera archetypes. It’s frustrating because this is a story that could resonate emotionally if the characters were written differently. The four central performances here are quite good, and they elevate everything that’s not working, but not enough for the entire movie to work. And it’s hard to say if it’s the fault of Susan McMartin’s screenplay or if the problems with this story are more in the source material. Judging by what I know about Colleen Hoover, however, it’s not a stretch to imagine it’s the latter. There are some moments that feel true emotionally scattered throughout the overdone and overwrought melodrama that dominates.

Allison Williams is an actress I’ve liked for over a decade, having first seen her in HBO’s Girls. Since then, she’s proven herself more than capable at other kinds of roles in films like Get Out and M3GAN. And Willams is bringing more humanity and truth to this role than it deserves. She’s fighting like hell to find anything real here, and unfortunately it’s a thankless effort as the script is actively working against her at every point. Dave Franco is just coming off the excellent horror romance Together from earlier this year. It’s kind of funny when you realize that Together, a gruesome and grotesque horror movie, is more romantic than Regretting You, which is being sold as a rom-com. Franco is doing good work here, he’s always likable and charming. But the script also isn’t doing him any favors.

Mckenna Grace is playing Morgan’s daughter Clara, and this character frustrated me. I need to go on a quick tangent here, so bear with me. This isn’t a spoiler, this is something we learn in the trailer, but if you’re sensitive about this kind of thing, maybe skip this paragraph. Morgan and Jonah learn shortly after Chris and Jenny die, that they were having an affair and lying to their respective spouses for years before the car accident that kills them both. And this entire plot hinges on the fact that Clara does not know this, and Morgan can’t figure out how to tell her, or wants to protect her from this painful truth. The fact that Clara, a 16 year old character who doesn’t seem like an idiot, cannot put this together considering the obvious implications that emerge from their deaths, is ridiculous. Like I was saying, if these characters just spoke to each other like adults, this entire conflict would be avoided. But then, I guess there’d be no movie.

But even so, Mckenna Grace is doing her best to keep this character recognizable on a human level. The way Clara is written is frustrating, but she’s doing her best to make her likable. Her chemistry with Mason Thames is charming and likable. Thames is everywhere these days – just this year, he headlined the live-action How to Train Your Dragon reboot, and reprised his role in last week’s Black Phone 2. It’s easy to see a bright future ahead for both of these actors. And even if the writing of these characters isn’t strong enough to make you care where either of them end up, the actors are elevating them over where they should probably be. I’m not sure if this film is out of touch about the ways teenagers are these days, or if I am (either is possible), but everything about these younger characters feels like it was lifted from a 1980s movie. It feels like these characters have very little in common with how actual teenagers behave and interact in the year 2025. The trite, cliche way these kids try to rebel against their families and the way they speak to the adults in their lives – it all rings false.

And a quick word about product placement – this movie is full of it. It’s kind of ridiculous that a teenager in 2025, even one who wants to go to film school, would have their bedroom covered in posters for films like Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown, The Untouchables and Roman Holiday. And they have a movie night where they watch Clueless. And what do all these films have in common, you may ask? They’re all owned by Paramount Pictures and so is Regretting You. There’s a scene where Miller, who works at specifically an AMC movie theater, shows Clara a movie after the theater has closed, and when they settle into the theater seats and their movie begins, you can hear the fanfare from the Paramount logo. There is also a scene early on where a character is using a prominently displayed Ninja blender, and on the kitchen counter, you can see a strategically placed box of Pop Tarts. And this kind of goes on for the entire movie. I guess studios will do what they need to do to get a theatrically released adult drama made in 2025, but when we’re essentially stopping for commercial breaks, it brings down the whole movie.

The filmmaking here is pretty standard and unexciting throughout. Josh Boone, who made The Fault in Our Stars, is our director here, and based on that, you’d think he’d be a solid choice for this kind of movie. But there is nothing about the filmmaking on display here that is indicative of a filmmaker with a strong vision. Nothing here stands out at all. The cinematography, set design, and costumes all have absolutely nothing to them. And we have several top 40-adjacent needle drops that feel like the most obvious, uninspired choices. And screenwriter Susan McMartin previously wrote the screenplay for After, which is one of the worst teen romance movies I’ve ever seen. I will say Regretting You is better than After, maybe not by a whole lot, but still. 

It sounds like I’m trashing this movie relentlessly, but I do want to reiterate the performances in this film are largely very good. No single actor is responsible for why this doesn’t work. Allison Williams and Dave Franco are charming and have good chemistry and are trying their damnedest to elevate this source material. Mckenna Grace and Mason Thames are adorable together, despite the lousy writing they’re sacked with. Overall, I think if McMartin and Boone leaned further into the darker aspects of this story and let the emotions and revelations feel more genuine, we might really have something here. But similarly to when I saw It Ends With Us, I saw Regretting You in a very crowded theater of mostly women who were with this movie every step of the way. At several points I heard audible sniffles around me, and nothing here moved me that much. So, if this sounds like something you’ll enjoy, there’s a chance you will.