“Regretting You,” released in October and adapted from Colleen Hoover’s novel, enters the screen with promising elements: a bestselling source material, rising stars McKenna Grace and Mason Thames, and a premise grounded in grief, family rifts, and young romance. What I got, however, was a drama-romance that frequently—and maybe unintentionally—slips into comedy.
Despite its genre label, the film often veers into laugh-out-loud territory, not because of sharp humor but because of the baffling choices characters make. Teenagers being impulsive is understandable, and grieving adults deserve grace, but there’s a point at which the behavior becomes so exaggerated that it borders on parody. More than once, in a nearly empty movie theater, I found myself actually laughing—an awkward response for a story that clearly aims for emotional depth. It’s moments like these that highlight why so many readers have been boycotting Hoover’s work.
Allison Williams, playing the conflicted mother, delivers a strong performance, but her character’s string of questionable decisions adds to the film’s uneven tone. The actors clearly commit to their roles, but the storyline’s inconsistencies leave them navigating scenes that often feel odd or underdeveloped.
Grace and Thames deliver earnest, grounded performances, doing their best with a script that rarely seems to meet them halfway. The cinematography is clean and steady, providing occasional emotional texture, but the writing repeatedly undercuts the film’s strengths.
For every sweet or realistic moment, there’s another that prompts a head tilt—among them, toward the end of the movie, is a supposed romantic line in which a boy tells the protagonist through a pre-recorded video, “Hey, I’ll break up with my girlfriend and ask you to prom if you turn around for me.” It’s unclear to me how that’s meant to be charming.
By the time the grandfather reveals—in the final minutes—that the family isn’t actually struggling financially because he owns valuable “air rights” in New York (the ‘air’ he’s been joking about Miller inheriting is real), the narrative has already stretched believability past its limit. The twist landed with a thud, feeling less like a payoff and more like a last-minute attempt to tie up loose ends.
I understand that many people enjoyed this film—some of those I saw it with were watching it for the second and third time. “Regretting You” has glimmers of sincerity, but they are constantly overshadowed by writing that can’t decide whether it wants to be heartfelt, dramatic or unintentionally funny. However, the result of this is a film that, despite genuine talent on screen, never quite found its footing for me.
