Regretting You captures the broad strokes of Colleen Hoover’s best selling novel, telling a complex story of love, regret, and a mother-daughter relationship in the face of an unspeakable tragedy that though it features a wonderful lead performance from Allison Williams, never truly captures the emotional depths and nuances of the source material.

 

There is a simplicity to Colleen Hoover’s writing style that makes her works a very easy read, which may lead some readers questioning how so many of her books have become #1 best sellers. The answer lies in the stories she tells, which tap into a deep aching human emotion that hooks readers and has them consistently turning the page to find out what is going to happen next to the characters, lending themselves naturally to be adapted to the big screen. Last summer saw It Ends With Us being the first novel of Hoover’s to get the big screen treatment, which became a runaway success, and now Paramount Pictures is hoping to recapture that success with Regretting You. Assembling a talented cast featuring Allison Williams, Mckenna Grace, Dave Franco, Mason Thames, Willa Fitzgerald and Scott Eastwood, and bringing director Josh Boone back to the romance genre after adapting the beloved teen romance The Fault in Our Stars in 2014, the runway was set for another romantic hit. While there is no denying that there is lots that this adaptation gets right, especially the lead performance of Williams who is excellent from start to finish and the romantic relationships between the lead characters, Susan McMartin’s screenplay condenses Hoover’s novel to what can only be described as the story’s highlights. In doing so, while the story’s biggest moments deliver exactly what fans of the novel will desire from a film adaptation, the emotional depth of Hoover’s story never fully leaps off the page onto the screen, resulting in an emotionally engaging but at times shallow tale that never reaches its true potential.

 

With Boone in the director’s chair, who is no stranger to romances (and tragic ones at that), he manages to get solid performances out of his cast. Williams is brilliant as Morgan, capturing the anguish at the loss of her husband and sister, only to discover a devastating secret that obliterates her life as she knew it. It’s an emotionally demanding role, but in every scene Williams is radiant whether it be a tender exchange between her and Franco, an explosive emotional moment opposite Grace, or even being that overly embarrassing mother when Miller is in the picture that will have audiences erupting into laughter, Williams dazzles from start to finish. Grace is on paper the perfect casting for Clara, and she excels in the film’s more dramatic moments and opposite Thames, who she develops an infectious and playful romantic chemistry with. When playing her character’s more rebellious moments, Grace is not as fully believable as she is during the film’s other moments, because Grace is anything but a rebel herself, but when it comes to the reckoning of those rebellious moments opposite Williams, Grace and Williams find a devastating beauty that captures the mother daughter relationship that Hoover originally developed in her novel. 

 

Continuing to have an incredible year on the big screen, Thames is the perfect high school sweetheart. Effortlessly cool, charming and with a dash of danger, he shines on screen, especially opposite Grace that when combined with their chemistry in New Years Rev which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year, they are well on their way to becoming the next “it” Hollywood romantic screen pairing. Franco is decent as Jonah, doing wonders with the unacted longing for Morgan despite not being able to land the screenplay’s more dramatic moments as strongly as Williams. Eastwood and Fitzgerald are both great as Chris and Jenny respectively, making the most of their smaller roles, while Sam Morelos brings some much needed moments of comedic relief as Clara’s best friend Lexie.

 

While Hoover’s novel is not incredibly long itself, coming in at three hundred and sixty-six pages in length, there is a lot to unpack within her story. It is something that McMartin understands in approaching her screenplay, carefully crafting the film’s opening act to properly introduce each character and the relationships between each of them, only to shatter Morgan, Clara and Jonah’s lives with the deaths of Chris and Jenny. As she moves into the film’s latter acts, there is never a shortage of the blossoming young love between Clara and Miller and the adorable moments that will have audiences swooning, such as the memorable movie date, nor is the unaddressed emotions and complex history between Morgan and Jonah underplayed. In fact, McMartin rounds out these moments, providing more details to each scene that was not in Hoover’s original novel, allowing these moments to pop even more on the big screen and deliver the grand, romantic gestures that audiences have come to expect from the romance genre.