Regretting You Overview

Not Top Rom-Com//Seeing this movie is something you will regret spending your money on. Regretting You is a cute romantic comedy that plays with your emotions and makes the audience hope that everything will work out in the end. (Photo by Megan Meusy)

*Content warning: This article contains spoilers for Regretting You.

Regretting You is an amazing book and now, an amazing movie. It came out on October 24th, and many people around the country have been excited to see it. The film stars leading lady Clara (McKenna Grace), Miller (Mason Thames), Morgan (Allison Williams), and Jonah (Dave Franco). These stars have brought a lot of publicity for this movie and have been keeping the hype up for it. This movie was inspired by the book and author, Colleen Hoover. While I believe she has written so many outstanding books, just like Regretting You, I do not believe the directors fulfilled the story as much as I was hoping for.

The movie first started out with giving backstory about the mother, Morgan her sister, Jenny Morgan’s boyfriend, Chris and Jenny’s boyfriend, Jonah. It panned to them all hanging out at the beach when they were teenagers, and there was a weird tension between Morgan and Jonah. Then the movie fast-forwards to the present, when Clara is a teenager with her parents Morgan and Chris, while Jonah and Jenny have a little baby boy. This was a little confusing at first because you really had to pay attention to who was who, and it was a little hard to understand that Chris was the father of Clara when they had first shot the tension between Morgan and Jonah.

However, as we get a little more into the movie, we end up seeing Clara start to fall for Miller, and when she tells her parents about him, they reject him very fast. The next morning, Clara leaves for school while her dad, Chris, leaves for work, and Jonah comes over to drop off the baby with Morgan. While Morgan is watching the baby, she gets a call from an ambulance saying Chris has been in a terrible car accident. Once she gets to the hospital, she sees Jonah. Jonah then tells her that Jenny has also been in a terrible car accident. They soon piece together that Jenny and Chris had been having an affair, but decide to keep it a secret from Clara.

While grieving the passing of her aunt and father, Clara skips the funeral to hang out with Miller. The movie then shifts between Clara's viewpoint and her mother, Morgan’s viewpoint. Morgan goes through ups and downs, feeling betrayed by her sister and husband, and how they have been having an affair right beneath her and Jonah's noses, and finding out that supposedly Jonah and Jenny's kid is actually the son of Chris. 

This was one of the main plot twists that really set the set the setting for the movie. It became the central focus of the story, repeating the affair’s emotional impact again and again. At first, I was on the edge of my seat, wondering what would happen next, but only once in a while I found myself looking at the screen next to us in the drive in movie. However there would be a plot twist that would just back up that Jenny and Chris were having an affair. As I did feel bad for Morgan and Jonah, I could not keep interested when it was just back and forth. However, it was cute how they bonded over their trauma together, and it brought them closer together when they were first shown at the beginning of the movie. I did like how Clara was getting to know Miller, but in some parts, it felt like she was using Miller to get over her trauma, which I did not appreciate. I would have liked it to be cute and slow. Although they did have some sweet moments together, I wish it didn’t feel like she was using him.

Throughout the movie, I enjoyed watching Jonah and Morgan taking their own ways and rediscovering themselves with each other’s support and opening up, and realizing they still had feelings for one another but never acted on them. At the end of the movie, it was nice to see how Miller was plotting against Clara since the first time he saw her. Even though it was a cheesy, silly movie, it was cute and fun, but not as good as I was expecting it to be, like the other movies they have based on Colleen Hoover's book.