REGRETTING YOU (2025)

Genre: Romance/Drama
Director: Josh Boone
Cast: McKenna Grace, Mason Thames, Allison Williams, Dave Franco, Scott Eastwood, Willa Fitzgerald, Clancy Brown
Runtime: 1 hr 56 mins
Rating: NC16 (Some Drug Use and Scenes of Intimacy)
Released By: UIP
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 30 October 2025

Synopsis: Based on the bestselling book, REGRETTING YOU introduces audiences to Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) and her daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) as they explore what’s left behind after a devastating accident reveals a shocking betrayal and forces them to confront family secrets, redefine love, and rediscover each other. REGRETTING YOU is a story of growth, resilience, and self-discovery in the aftermath of tragedy, also starring Dave Franco and Mason Thames with Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald. 

Movie Review:

‘Regretting You’ is based on a Colleen Hoover book, the first of many following in the wake of the unexpected box-office success of ‘It Ends with Us’ to get the cinematic treatment. Scandal-aside, those who have seen the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni movie last year will probably agree that it found a splendid balance between weepy drama and romance, perhaps even better than fans of Hoover’s book could have expected it to be.

Alas, the same cannot be said of director Josh Boone’s tonally inept adaptation, which starts off sincere, and then becomes unintentionally laughable and even cringe-worthy.

A brief overture in 2007 introduces us to Morgan Grant (Allison Williams), who gets pregnant after high school and ends up settling down with her boyfriend Chris (Scott Eastwood), even as it is clear that both have different personalities and are probably not quite as compatible with each other. Morgan’s sister Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) on the other hand is the type of girl a jock like Chris would favour, whereas Chris’ bookish best friend Jonah (Dave Franco) is closer to Morgan’s type.

Fast-forward 17 years later, Chris and Morgan’s daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) is now in high school, and Jonah and Jenny have a new baby son. Up to this point, except for the odd digital de-aging of the actors who play themselves 17 years before and 17 years after, ‘Regretting You’ proves an intriguing watch, especially for those who have not read the book. It is probably no secret that Morgan and Jonah still have feelings for each other, but are because of their respective other halves, trying to maintain distance between them; the same however cannot be said of Chris and Jenny, who seem not shy to be playful with each other even in front of Morgan and Jonah respectively.

The tragedy – in this case, a car accident that causes the deaths of both Chris and Jenny – confirms what you could have guessed, i.e. that they were having an affair all this while.

How does Morgan deal with the posthumous discovery of Chris’ betrayal? Ditto for Jonah. What about Clara – should she be given to know the truth, or kept in the dark so her memories of her father and her favourite auntie are not sullied? It is in the second act where the movie splits into two occasionally intersecting plots that it starts to go off the rails.

Between Chris/ Morgan and Clara, the focus ends up being on the latter, which while perfectly understandable being Boone’s YA inclinations, is what makes the movie duller for it. With no disrespect to Clara, her coming-of-age is a somewhat dull affair, grappling with her feelings for sweet yet tender kid Miller (Mason Thames) while dealing with the deaths in her family; even after she stumbles upon Chris and Morgan kissing, her response – by inviting Miller over to spite her mother – is entirely predictable.

We would even say that their teenage romance is overshadowed by the budding relationship between Chris and Morgan, as both come to terms with acknowledging their mutual feelings for each other, how they have suppressed these feelings all these years while their partners had gone behind their backs, and how to finally move forward with hope together. Both Williams and Franco are beautifully understated actors, and we’d only wish that their characters had been more fully developed.

As it stands, Boone struggles to keep both perspectives moving at a steady and coherent clip, eventually settling on placing more of the focus on Clara and Miller. We cannot say how faithful that is to Hoover’s book, but having had the benefit of seeing ‘It Ends with Us’, we can say ‘Regretting You’ lacks the same polish, finesse and nuance that made the former such a captivating hit to those who had read the book and those who did not. You won’t regret the time spent with this bunch, but we dare say you’ll be left wanting – and perhaps that is the bigger regret.

Movie Rating:

(Lacking the nuance, polish and finesse of 'It Ends with Us', this adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel struggles to find the right balance between weepy drama and romance)

Review by Gabriel Chong