Two couples that have been together since high school wonder if they made the right choice in their partners, while the daughter of one of them begins her own high school romance, in Regretting You, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. This teary multi-generational romance is brightened by a radiant cast, and has all the makings of becoming The Notebook for a new generation, even if its second half delivers few surprises en route to a predictable conclusion.
For audiences going in blind, however, the first half of Regretting You boasts some genuinely unexpected story developments that elevate the movie above typical genre fare. Avoid any and all promotional material for the film, including its trailer, which give away key narrative beats that are best appreciated fresh.
Regretting You opens with The Killers’ When We Were Young on the soundtrack and a quartet of actors pushing 40 amusingly playing high school seniors. It’s the mid-2000s, and hard-partying Chris (Scott Eastwood) and reserved girlfriend Morgan (Allison Williams) are celebrating their graduation alongside Morgan’s free-spirited sister Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) and her nerdish boyfriend Jonah (Dave Franco).
As Chris and Jenny play beer pong and Morgan and Jonah watch from the sidelines, we can’t help but wonder if these two couples are incorrectly paired; a knowing glance between Jenny and Jonah suggests that they feel the same. But when Jenny reveals that she’s pregnant, it feels like the die has been cast, and their future has been sealed.
Seventeen years later, and that’s exactly what has occurred: Chris and Morgan, happily married, now have a high school senior of their own in Clara (Mckenna Grace), while Jonah and Jenny have recently reunited and have a months-old son. Morgan bears a grudge against Jonah for abandoning her sister, and their friend group, more than a decade ago—but underneath the anger, there’s still a shared attraction.
Unexpected tragedy will touch upon both of these families, revealing some long-kept secrets and testing the bonds between these friends. Clara, meanwhile, will begin her own romance with Miller (Mason Thames), an aspiring film student who lives with his grandfather (Clancy Brown)—and just happens to be the son of the drug dealer that the central quartet knew back in their school days.
Adapted from the bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover, Regretting You has a lot going on in its early scenes, and director Josh Boone deftly charts each of these relationships as well as the various ties between all the characters with an impressive precision. Boone handles the central tragedy that drives the story, and how his characters progressively grapple with it, especially well; despite containing serious subject matter, the film never wallows in the kind of sentimentality of the director’s The Fault in Our Stars.
But the strongest asset in Regretting You is an engaging cast that lights up the screen and keeps us invested in these characters long after the narrative momentum has come to a halt. Especially impressive here is Williams, who radiates as the wife, sister, friend, and mother attempting to do right by everyone else while processing her own personal grief. Williams has turned in memorable work in M3GAN and its sequel, but she reaches a new level here, anchoring this complex romance with a performance that feels both lived-in and luminous.
Thames, too, boasts some real star power in another impressive turn following his performances in this year’s How to Train Your Dragon and Black Phone 2. Miller’s ambitions as a film student provide Regretting You with some irresistible appeal for cinephiles: his room is decked out with posters of classic films from Chinatown to Paper Moon, he works in a cinema and brings Clara to an outdoor screening of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, and shares a big moment with her in front of a poster for The Godfather. His big student film, however, is more of an (unintentionally) creepy love letter than a genuine effort.
Last year’s adaptation of Hoover’s It Ends With Us was a surprise hit at the box office, but Regretting You is a much different kind of film, and feels a lot closer to the kind of Nicholas Sparks adaptations that seemed to come out annually a decade ago. It may not reach the genre-breaking highs of The Notebook, but it works as well as could be expected within the confines of its genre, and its inevitable box office success should surprise to no one.
Ultimately, Regretting You does not reinvent the romantic melodrama, but its earnest performances and grounded emotional core give it a resonance that lingers beyond its predictability. For fans of The Fault in Our Stars or The Notebook, this is a tearjerker that hits familiar notes with some genuine feeling—a reminder that even well-worn love stories can still move us when told with heart.
