Colleen Hoover might be a name a lot of people might remember. She is an author of romance and the young adult genre. One of her books was adapted last year. It starred Blake Lively in the lead role and co-starred Brandon Schlenar. That movie ended up being successful in more ways than one. There was a controversy regarding the director, Justin Baldoni, and Lively after the film was finished and released last August with a lot of turmoil surrounding it. Hopefully, there is none of that surrounding her latest book to film adaptation called “Regretting You”. The new film comes out this week, and I’m sure all the women who read the book will be flocking out to theaters to see it. 

This story focuses on a 17 year old girl Clara (McKenna Grace, Anniversary) as she navigates life as a teenager in high school thinking about going to an arts college, but she is sidetracked a bit by a popular boy in school Millar Adams (Mason Thames, Black Phone 2) that she likes quite a lot. There is an on again off again side to their relationship as he has a girlfriend he can’t seem to leave. They hit it off in various ways, such as they are both into film. She wants to be an actress, and he wants to direct films. The problem is that her overbearing mother, Allison Williams (M3GAN), won’t let her go to be able to be herself. She gets in the way of this burgeoning love connection. 

Besides the young adult angle to this movie, there is also an inciting event that changes the course of the film. It’s basically given away in the first trailer, which is ridiculous. The inciting event is a car accident where two of the main characters tragically meet their end, leaving two others to figure out what happened and where they go from here. The two characters are Williams’ character and Dave Franco (Together), who also has a baby from another woman. Williams’ character’s sister, played by Willa Fitzgerald. There is more than meets the eye here as the two remaining have their own connection in a way that goes back many years to when they were teenagers. All of this gets a little contrived by the ending of the film.

McKenna Grace is a young actress I first noticed in a little movie called Gifted co-starring Chris Evans. She has since gone on to do some good work in the Ghostbusters sequels. She has fully grown up on screen though and she gives a very emotional performance as this teenager caught between her love of a boy in school and her mother who is hiding secrets from her about herself, her father, and this other man who has lost his wife and mother of his child. She’s very confused as any girl her age would be under similar circumstances. Grace is able to bring her emotions to screen in more than one way. A few times, she cries and others she is happy while other times as teenagers will be, she is angry at her mother. Her emotions as this character run the gambit. She has come a long way as an actress, and this role proved that to me. She is destined for many more roles after this one, I’m sure of it. She’s the main reason to see this movie.

On the other hand, Williams is like an emotional black hole. Even when she’s made, you can’t see much on her face. She doesn’t exude the way Grace does on screen, and because of that, she lost me as a supporter of the character. I genuinely felt she didn’t give me as a viewer the emotional heft that you need with everything that was going on in this story. Even some romantic scenes didn’t work. Not to mention her, the cgi tried to depict her and Franoc’s characters. This didn’t change much of their looks even though this film has a time gap of seventeen years.They looked the same to me. I didn’t buy her having a 17 year old daughter. Making this is more a casting/directing problem. Who knows? But she wasn’t the right actress for the role as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t care much for Williams in this movie. She took me out of it every time she was on screen. The same goes for Franco’s character. He was very emotionless as well.

One thing I get annoyed by in movies, and I know it’s an inevitable part of moviemaking, is product placement.  This picture hit me over the head with product placement from the very beginning. Budweiser beers were prominent in one scene. Jolly Rangers Candy played a bigger part in the story. A marathon gas station was used on a couple of occasions, but the biggest and most glaring of them all was AMC Theaters. Ironically enough, my screening was in an AMC Theater. Go figure. The film hit me over the head with AMC Theaters. The Thames character works there, and there is an undercurrent of filmmaking and love of movies in the picture. I just would have rather that the director used a fake movie theater chain instead of AMC, so the product placement wouldn’t have been so obvious.  That being said, my favorite theater I like to go to in the area where I live is an AMC theater. I won’t say which one and where, but they do have the best amenities, such as their Dolby cinema, and A-list is worth its weight in gold as far as I’m concerned.  Keep doing a great job, AMC theaters. You’re the best theater chain out there as far as I’m concerned. 

“Regretting You” is an okay romance/young adult movie. It lost me at times with Williams and Franco characters’ storylines, but I loved everything involving the Grace and Thames characters’ storyline. I genuinely felt a connection for what the Grace character was going through in the film. Maybe it was because of her emotional performance that ducked me in . Who knows? I just love her as an actress, and I can’t wait to see what she does next. With Thames as well. I really like his progression as an actor. All the product placement annoyed me, but overall, I didn’t hate this movie. There was some contrivance that bothered me, but I understand you can’t get to the meat of the story without them and the inciting event. These aren’t usually my kinds of films, but this one made me laugh at times and care about a couple of the characters. I’m sure my opinion won’t matter, though, as readers of this book will surely go in droves to see this picture.

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen