Regret you | Review | The cinema blog

★★

Was it THE story that attracted punters en masse around last year It ends with us Or that history? Justin Baldoni’s emotional excoriation regarding on-screen abuse or Blake Lively’s allegations about it. We suspect that it is the latter case. Regardless, Colleen Hoover’s serviceable adaptation proved such a resounding success that others couldn’t help but follow suit. What is it like to have a large catalog? Stephen King for a BookTok fandom. Regret you lands first out of the blocks, The fault in our stars“Josh Boone. Lacking the gravitational pull of star feuds, Regret you must earn his chips entirely on merit. Too bad, therefore, that it is only a lukewarm soap opera in which the soup is ladled from a shallow emotional pool into abysses of implausibility.

As in Baldoni’s film, Boone fights two tones, attempting – unsuccessfully – to simultaneously punch the guts and pull out the heart. Juggling the aftermath of tragedy and betrayal with a multi-generational romantic comedy, giddy amid an autumn palette. The adjustment is only slightly less difficult – It ends with you balanced domestic violence with Lively launching a new – but much more boring – hair care line. Throw aside a plot that relies on leaps of imagination into logical imagination and what’s left is a storyline that has nothing to say. With a narrative trajectory as obvious as it is uninspired and emotional engagement contained to mundane levels, what is left? No judgment, no biting, precious little conviction.

Allison Williams is housewife Megan Grant, a woman seemingly defined only by the relationships in her life. She has no job and barely exists beyond her limited domestic framework. Megan is the mother of Mckenna Grace’s Clara, the wife of Scot Eastwood’s Chris, the sister of Willa Fitzgerald’s Jenny, and the unrequited love interest of Dave Franco’s Jonah. It’s a dynamic born of seventeen years but never seems rooted in a real sense of lived experience. Flashback to the late 2000s ages the protagonists well, but it’s hard to imagine a world, in this context, in which they actively grew into themselves. The story’s artificial central deviation does little to help.

When Chris and Jenny both get into a car accident, a cave opens into Megan’s life, not to mention that of Clara, Jonah and the baby the latter left behind. The question no one thought about, but the film asks us, is why the two men were actually in the car together at the same time. It’s not a mystery we’re asked to dwell on for long, and the reveal itself doesn’t particularly surprise or give rise to a compelling new direction for the film.

More dynamic would be Clara’s budding relationship with the coolest kid in school, Miller Adams, played by How to train your dragonIt’s Mason Thames. We’re told that Miller comes from a family of bad apples, but that never really rings true to the beauty of his catalog, his relationship with his grandfather (Clancy Brown), and the random subplot he comes up with, concerning a long-term scheme to move the town’s border a few miles. Thames shares, if nothing else, some much-needed chemistry with Grace and finds YA sparks in the scenes they share. It’s an odd fit to the broader themes of heartbreak and betrayal, but at least manages to feel like a plot thread that goes somewhere a viewer might want to follow.

There are whiffs of a more entertaining film here. The depth exceeds the material, but a chilling dinner sequence screams with awkward energy, while an earlier parking lot stranding shows Williams nailing the requisite comedic timing. It’s very pretty to look at and will no doubt turn away the right crowd, but don’t bother with the tissues this time, it’s dry eyes all around.

T.S.