Colleen Hoover’s stories aren’t designed for subtlety, and “Regretting You” is no exception. The film unfolds with the same relentless pace as her novels — emotions spelled out in painful detail and absurd twists that land before the audience can catch its breath. It’s the kind of story that pushes for immediate reaction, even if it comes at the cost of overall quality. On screen, however, that approach feels uneven. The movie is so busy moving from one moment to the next that it rarely gives its story or characters time to land.
Directed by Josh Boone, “Regretting You” brings a high-profile cast to a story that begins with a high-school romance and escalates into midlife crises and emotional betrayal. The film opens in the past, asking Allison Williams, Dave Franco, Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald to play teenagers — a choice that is distracting at best and outright confusing at worst. Williams is meant to look 15 years younger through the magic of an overly clean-cut wig and some digital smoothing, but the effect is rather uncanny. The scenes work as exposition, but they hardly feel convincing as lived experience.
Seventeen years later, the narrative catches up to the present. Williams plays Morgan, mother to teenage Clara (Mckenna Grace), with Eastwood as her still-devoted husband, Chris. Franco portrays Jonah, Jenny’s (Morgan’s sister) soon-to-be husband. Life appears stable, even if Morgan’s life is largely devoted to being a wife and mother, following her teenage pregnancy. Clara has a strong bond with her father and aunt but a more strained, complicated rapport with her mother.
The inciting tragedy — the revelation of Chris’s infidelity with Jenny, as well as their deaths — shatters the family. Morgan discovers her husband’s affair just as Clara begins to navigate a romantic and sexual awakening with Miller (Mason Thames), labeled in the film as “the coolest guy in school,” though that’s hard to believe when he spends half the time sucking on a lollipop and the other half mewing. These dual betrayals form the emotional spine of the film, yet Boone splits the screen time so evenly between them that neither arc fully satisfies.
Morgan and Jonah are left to grapple with grief, betrayal and the long shadow of disloyalty, while Clara’s romance with Miller plays more like teen wish-fulfillment than a story with real stakes. Miller is positioned as forbidden but harmless; we are told he loves Clara, but the connection never feels earned. Grace is a capable performer and Thames has the soft-eyed sensitivity the role requires, but their chemistry reads as more wholesome, despite their several intimate scenes. The same issue arises with Morgan and Jonah, whose long-harbored feelings are suggested but never fully realized. A few charming moments — the gifted Jolly Ranchers, fleeting smiles — surface, but the love story mostly fades into the background, save for a teary kiss in the rain at the film’s end.
The dual-focus structure highlights a central problem in the adaptation: The story works best when it can concentrate its emotional energy on one set of characters. Splitting the screen between the mother and daughter’s arcs diffuses dramatic tension, leaving the adult storyline underdeveloped and the teen romance overstretched. Boone clearly intended to appeal to both Hoover’s adult readership and her teen fan base, but the result is a movie that is tonally uneven and emotionally inconsistent.
Side characters don’t fare much better. Clara’s best friend seems written almost exclusively for comic relief, a problem compounded by the fact that she is one of the only non-white characters in the film. A background romance between the only two characters of color is an unintentional commentary of how secondary the supporting cast is allowed to be.
The more interesting question raised by “Regretting You” is why Hollywood keeps investing in Hoover adaptations when she is, at best, a controversial figure whose work many are critical of. “It Ends with Us” premiered last year, and she already has two more adaptations, “Reminders of Him” and “Verity,” lined up for release next year. Arguably, Hoover’s popularity on BookTok has played a huge role in this momentum; her audience is massive, vocal and influential, making her work an obvious target for studios. The stories don’t need to be exceptional — merely engaging.
“Regretting You” shows exactly why Hoover has become so reliable for Hollywood. Her stories are easy to follow, emotionally digestible and require almost no critical thought. The actual quality of the source material matters less than the fact that fans will show up and talk about it online. The film hits all the expected emotional beats for Hoover readers but leaves narrative depth and character development by the wayside.
“Regretting You” is proof of how Hoover’s influence and built-in audience drives production. The movie hits the key moments fans want, but as a film, it feels shallow and uneven.
