Review: 'Regretting You' is a mishmash of soap opera cliches about love, grief and mother-daughter turmoil — but Mckenna Grace is good in her first grownup role.
The movies based on the books of Colleen Hoover — the domestic violence drama “It Ends With Us” and now the teen- and grownup-centered romance “Regretting You” — have their value as time-savers, because people can sit through two hours of turgid melodrama instead of taking more time reading it. The number of people who can fake their way through their book clubs will go up exponentially.
“Regretting You” starts with one bunch of teens: Morgan (Allison Williams) is at a beach party after graduating from high school, with her boyfriend Chris (Scott Eastwood), Scott’s best pal Jonah (Dave Franco) and Jonah’s girlfriend, Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) — who’s also Morgan’s younger sister. Morgan isn’t having fun or alcohol, because, as she confides in Jonah, she’s pregnant with Scott’s child.
The movie then cuts forward 17 years — rescuing viewers from the discomfort of watching those four actors playing high-schoolers, either through wide eyes or CGI de-aging. Morgan and Chris live in Chris’s childhood home, where they care for their 16-year-old daughter, Clara (Mckenna Grace). Jenny is now with Jonah, who returned after a long absence, and they now have a baby boy.
Clara’s relationship with Morgan is strained in the typical teen-daughter ways. At the start of the story, the sticking point is Clara’s interest in the cutest boy in school, Miller (played by Mason Thames, from “How to Train Your Dragon” and the “Black Phone” movies) — seen by Morgan as a bad boy, entirely because his dad was the town drug dealer and is now in prison. In truth, Miller’s a budding film student who takes care of his cranky grandpa (played by Clancy Brown).
Then tragedy strikes, when Morgan gets a call that Chris has been in a car accident. At the hospital, she learns Chris has died. Then Jonah also runs in, having been told that Jenny also was in a car crash. Quickly, they realize that they both died in the same car crash — and, more slowly, Morgan and Jonah piece together that Chris and Jenny were having an affair. Morgan forbids Jonah from telling Clara this last part, and keeping that secret further divides mother and daughter.
There are more melodramatic plot twists scattered through screenwriter Susan McMartin’s adaptation, mostly to delay resolutions that any sentient creature could figure out long before the closing credits. (One of those complications — regarding Jonah’s long-buried feelings for Morgan — prompt another flashback with Williams and Franco looking artificially younger.)
Director Josh Boone had more to work with in adapting John Green’s equally weepy “The Fault in Our Stars,” and does what he can giving his actors, particularly Williams and Franco, something to do with their moony-eyed characters. If there’s a positive in all this soap opera, it’s the idea that the female characters, Morgan and Clara, ultimately get to chart their romantic and sexual destinies, which is a nice change.
The one redeeming thing about “Regretting You” is Mckenna Grace, who at 19 is blossoming into grown-up roles after showing talent as a child actor. (Most notably, Grace was the best part of the last two “Ghostbusters” movies, playing Egon’s nerdy granddaughter Phoebe.) Grace’s portrayal of the emotional complications of being a teenager are the one element of this syrupy movie that rings true.
——
‘Regretting You’
★★
Opens Friday, October 24, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for sexual content, teen drug and alcohol use, and brief strong language. Running time: 117 minutes.