"There’s escapist value here, enough to keep the casual audience entertained"

Regretting You is everything you’d expect from a Colleen Hoover adaptation; emotional chaos wrapped in glossy sentimentality.

Directed by Josh Boone and adapted by Susan McMartin from Hoover’s 2019 novel, the film aims to explore love, betrayal and the fragile threads that hold a family together. It just never digs deep enough to make any of it feel real.

At its core, the story follows the strained relationship between Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) and her teenage daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace), whose lives implode after a devastating accident reveals painful family secrets.

What unfolds should’ve been a layered story about grief and forgiveness, instead, it feels like a soap opera that has been pieced together with forced tears and product adverts, it’s formulaic and predictable. The saving grace is the actors, who manage to perform even the most ridiculous lines with a straight face.

The biggest issue isn’t the premise, but in its execution, the writing is clunky, the editing is uneven and the emotional beats are so exaggerated they start to feel comedic. For example, there’s a funeral scene that should’ve been heart-wrenching, but I found myself laughing instead. Not out of cruelty, but because of how unintentionally awkward it was.

Williams and Grace do their best to bring depth to the material, but their performances never quite land. They cry a lot, but the emotions feel rehearsed, not lived-in. More like a masterclass in tear production rather than in acting. Mason Thames, who is on a hot-streak currently, plays Clara’s classmate Miller, his performance comes off as the most grounded presence on screen. His understated performance is a welcome contrast to the melodrama surrounding him. Then there’s the matter of AMC Theatres, which appears so prominently that it deserves its own supporting role. Every time the logo popped up, I half expected a “brought to you by” credit to flash across the screen.

The blatant product placement only highlights how artificial everything feels. Beneath the clichés and overwrought moments, there’s a genuinely good movie trying to get out. One about a mother and daughter learning to rebuild after betrayal, but it’s buried under predictable writing and tonal whiplash. Regretting You mistakes volume for emotion and ends up feeling flat, even when the tears are flowing. There’s escapist value here, enough to keep the casual audience entertained, but little else. It’s a film about grief and forgiveness that never earns either.