Review of Regretting You, directed by Josh Boone

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently started an 8-5 job and have been trying to reclaim my sanity and hobbies by finding fun things to do on the weekends and after work, and one of my saving graces truly has been my AMC A List subscription. I’ve always had one on and off throughout graduate school, and I recently reclaimed my subscription after a brief stint of thinking I was going to move to India (long story).

Anyways, something my sister and I tend to do is when there’s a weekend where we’re both free, we use our AMC A List to see a random movie. Sometimes the movie is one we both want to see, something only one of us knew about before, or we play Russian roulette and see what happens.

Today was actually a Russian roulette choice. We wanted to go to the movies on a Saturday, figured out what time we were both free on, and landed on Regretting You. The synopsis seemed kind of interesting, even though I’m not really into romance movies at all.

I should have researched this movie because I’m not a fan at all of Colleen Hoover’s work. After years of running a book and movie blog with an emphasis on international literature and books by BIPOC authors, it should be obvious that maybe someone deep in the literary fiction pipeline might not be Hoover’s target audience.

Glad people are reading and whatnot, but the writing style and content simply isn’t for me. I don’t think it’s good writing—but can be good storytelling. There’s a distinct difference. I started realizing it was a Hoover movie though when we came in and it was full of really loud middle and high school girls.

Like this was the most obnoxious audience. They talked through the entire movie, even when told to be quiet, and were screaming their heads off whenever the high school couple kissed. I’m all for active engagement with movies, but it was really hard to focus on the dialogue and what’s happening when a girl is yapping about her crush in the back.

That aside, we got through the movie. Here’s my review!

After the death of a beloved sister and husband, we see how their affair creates a ripple effect.

Our main character in this movie is Morgan, who lives with her husband Chris in his family’s home with their daughter Clara. We see how her sister Jenny and her boyfriend, Jonah, come into their orbit constantly, especially considering they all grew up together in North Carolina, and that Jenny and Jonah have their own child. Morgan and Chris got married because they had Clara, which is why Jenny and Jonah are now dancing around that topic.

In the past, through flashbacks, we see Chris might not be the best partner for Morgan because he makes snide remarks like she’s more fun while she’s drunk, then goes off with her sister to party with other people. Jonah stays with her and chats as they watch their partners have fun, which becomes another theme in the present day.

Back in the present moment as well, Clara is harboring a crush on one of the most popular boys in school, Miller (who I don’t see as a stereotypical popular boy or even popular at all, as he only engages with her, her friend, and his friend throughout the course of the film). When she gives him a ride and helps him move the city limits sign, she realizes he has a girlfriend who’s a bit overdemanding (this girl doesn’t appear in the movie at all except for pushy texts and calls).

Morgan is at home when she gets the call that Chris is in a car accident and at the hospital, and when she sees Jonah there at the desk too, she learns that Jenny also was in an accident. Chris and Jenny were in the same car and didn’t make it, leaving Morgan with two funerals to plan.

Clara is devastated by her father’s and aunt’s death, blaming herself for texting Jenny while it happened, and ditches the funeral with Miller to get high. Morgan comes and finds her, grounding Clara for a bit because of her actions, and then begins the drama of the rest of the movie.

As Jonah uncovers more evidence of Jenny and Chris’s cheating, Morgan starts to accept what happened was real between her sister and husband. Jonah also starts admitting he’s had feelings for Morgan all of these years, which they start to deny the chemistry between them but it’s kind of inevitable at this point.

Clara continues seeing Miller, visiting his job at AMC when she’s depressed about her dad, and works on her application to an acting school that she knows her mother won’t approve of. When she walks in on Jonah and her mother kissing, she asks Miller to come have sex with her in her room, and when he finds out she did it because she was mad at her mother (she insisted she wanted to wait until prom before), he gets angry and leaves.

The next day she acts very angry at her mother and snarky at her birthday dinner, but when she reveals she got into the school for acting, Miller gets up and leaves in a flurry. She follows him out and they aargue; he reveals he was waitlisted at the same school for film.

Morgan comes clean the next morning, after picking Clara up at the cemetery, where she was drinking, about her father and aunt’s infidelity. Clara surprisingly takes it in stride, understanding now why her mother has been taking up so many home renovation projects in order to “erase” her father’s existence.

Clara then apologizes to Miller for everything, and the movie pretty much ends with them getting back together at the AMC and Jonah/Morgan agreeing to try things out romantically. The final scene is Miller asking Clara to prom in front of everyone they love as his grandfather admits he can pay for Miller’s schooling and his chemotherapy care.

Overall Thoughts

I’ll have to say, rowdy audience aside, this movie had steam in the first twenty minutes. It seemed like a promising setup, but then it kind of just fell apart and went towards cliches and scenes that felt so corny that some of the people in the audience were straight up laughing. Those were serious scenes, too.

For me I need a movie that has a good story that’s well-written in terms of themes, arcs, and characters. This movie seriously was not it in the end. I was relieved when it ended and almost rolled my eyes. I went into this movie completely blind and genuinely thought it was not great—I had no idea it was a Hoover movie until the credits rolled.

I think this is a movie for someone out there, but not me. Taste is so incredibly subjective at the end of the day, so you have to remember a movie I might hate could be your favorite movie. Neither of us are wrong for our opinions. So if you want to watch this and haven’t already, go ahead and do it.

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