★½ (1½ out of 4)
Chances are you’ll regret the hell out of buying a ticket to “Regretting You,” now in theaters where it slathers an excess of gross sentiment on the already cringey 2019 bestseller by Colleen Hoover, who, to be fair, is usually not this soggy. Remember “It Ends with Us,” the most recent Hoover novel to go Hollywood? It made a wowza $350 million, mostly because the off-camera drama between battling stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni exceeded anything on screen. Also, big surprise, it was a movie that had its moments.
I can’t say that about “Regretting You,” which is regrettably free of memorable moments until “The End” flashes up on screen. The plot is the toxic essence of lazy soap opera, of the limp Nicholas Sparks variety and not Hoover, who at least on the page displays a harder and way sexier edge (read a few chapters of her “Verity” for a steamy example).
Tearjerking hasn’t been this crass since Disney killed Bambi’s mother. You’ve been warned.
“Regretting You” starts with a thud by having the main adult cast of thirtysomethings, led by Allison Williams, Dave Franco, Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald playing themselves as digitally de-aged teenagers. Never a good idea. “Regretting You” now being Exhibit A.
But director Josh Boone (“The Fault in Our Stars”) and screenwriter Susan McMartin plow head first into this brick wall of a plot. Yikes. The story follows two pairs of high school sweethearts in a small North Carolina town (pop 38,000). It’s an unplanned pregnancy that gets high schooler Morgan (Williams) to the altar with jock hero Chris (Eastwood).
Cue the boo-hoos since we can sense Morgan pining for Jonah (Franco), the quiet boyfriend of her flamboyant sister Jenny (Fitzgerald), who also has a baby later without the wedding march. When will these mismatched couples wise up? Not for years, when Chris and Jenny suffer a tragic accident, revealing their sinful secret affair that any sentient being in town could have seen from outer space.
That leaves Morgan alone to raise her daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace), an aspiring actress who’s 16 going on 17 and baby, she’s on the brink. Poor Morgan must suffer all the platitudes that single parenthood is heir to until Jonah pops back up and, well, you know.
The script does throw in a few twists but none you can’t predict, especially when Clara falls for her classmate Miller Adams, played by “Black Phone” heartthrob Mason Thames. Oh no, will Clara make the same teen mistakes that plagued her mother and that she’ll end up regretting?
It’s damn near impossible to care. An original idea would die of loneliness in this script. Of the actors, only Williams holds her head above water. The others barely hang on until a tidal wave of clichés leaves them gasping for the breath of a fresh idea that never comes. Tearjerking hasn’t been this crass since Disney killed Bambi’s mother. You’ve been warned.