Film Review: Regretting You

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

This movie is the tropiest of romantic trope movies.  It doesn't set out to be anything else but a typical weepy romance. 

And in that sense, it accomplishes its mission very well.

The story centers around Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) who gets pregnant right out of high school by her boyfriend Chris (Scott Eastwood), who she marries.  Seventeen years later, her sister Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) has just had a baby with Morgan's best friend Jonah (James Franco).  Meanwhile her straight-laced daughter Clara (McKenna Grace) is falling for the dangerous, but artistic and sensitive Miller Addams (Mason Thames).  However, tragedy strikes as both Chris and Jenny die in a car accident where Morgan and Jonah come to realize that the two that died were having an affair.  Morgan grieves this while hiding it from her daughter who begins to act out and cling further to the "bad boy" Miller.

All of this is very boiler-plate romantic melodrama.  If you accept that, you can sit back and enjoy the ride.  

This movie does not try to be self-important.  It knows what it is.  It marries the heartache of tragedy with the thrill of new love.  This is especially true with Clara and Miller.  The movie delves into all the silly high school drama of young love that feels so awkwardly familiar.  You can feel her heart flutter as Miller places gas money into the front pocket of her jeans.  It is a moment that is ambiguously intimate, like most encounters with your high school crush.  Morgan's story taps more into the mid-life crisis romance, where someone can still see you and desire you despite the changes over the years.

There is the enjoyable push/pull of the will-they/won't they throughout the movie.  Morgan and Jonah bond over their shared tragedy and Clara tries to lose herself with Miller.  Since I bought into the romances, I felt invested in what would happen with them, even though there is very little depth here.

The movie also does a decent job of capture the complicated relationship between a mother and a teenage daughter.  There is special emotional closeness and distance, the love/hate that comes from the tension between rebellion and control.  Any mother with a teen daughter will find familiar patterns here.

For the most part, the performances are decent.  Grace and Thames have the best chemistry and really make you believe in their budding romance.  Williams is serviceable, but not great.  There are many times where it looks like she is about to burst out laughing.  Franco does a good job as well, but he isn't given much to work with.  Sam Morelos plays Clara's sassy sidekick Lexie.  She could have turned into an incredibly annoying presence a la Kimmy Gibbler.  Instead, she brings some much needed levity to the melodrama.  Also Clancy Brown as a small role as Miller's ailing grandfather.  Now, I love me some Clancy Brown (he is the Kurgan after all), so any scene he is in automatically improves.

MILD SPOILER AHEAD

The movie does lose a point with me over a scene where Clara and Miller have sex.  I am usually fairly annoyed by fornication in mainstream movies, but I've come to not be surprised by its content.  However, I am particularly turned off when teens are involved.  Sexual immorality is already destructive enough of the human person.  But when it happens with the young, it is also particularly corruptive and corrosive.  There is something so incredibly sad to me about this unnecessary loss of innocence.  And while the movie does show some negative consequences of impetuous lust, it still detracts from the overall enjoyment of the movie.

END SPOILERS

There is a reason that Hallmark Movies are so popular: the have an enjoyable formula that people like and they stick to it.  This movie does the same thing.  And though this movie does not swing for the fences, it mostly hits its target.