I’m still not sure whether Regretting You was meant to be a romance or family drama — it dances between the two in a way that isn’t totally unrealistic, but just enough so for it to feel off. While I couldn’t decide what genre the movie was going for, I realized that no matter what it was meant to evoke, it was subpar at best. It works, but maybe for a TV screen instead of the big one…
The film follows Morgan as she navigates her simultaneous grief and anger after her husband and sister die suddenly in a car accident. On top of this, she discovers they were having an affair, which she then hides from her teenage daughter, Clara, to preserve her memory of her loved ones. Somehow in the midst of all of this tragedy, both Clara and Morgan find love; Clara with Miller, a seemingly perfect boy from school, and Morgan with Jonah, her (ex?) brother-in-law. If you’re thinking this whole thing is twisted and a little creepy, you’d be right.
What makes this film difficult to evaluate is it seems to buy into generic conventions while also not being entirely clear on what genre it is trying to evoke. For example, the romance plot is full of teenage cliches like throwing stones at their window in the middle of the night and movie theater dates. It taps into these common tropes, but lacks any real depth between Clara and Miller. Perhaps the most unrealistic part is how perfect of a person Miller is at 17 — they gave a teenage boy zero flaws whatsoever.
I will say, I appreciated Clara’s character and thought she felt like an actual teenager; she unknowingly insults her mother by calling her “predictable,” tries to be rebellious by sneaking boys in through her window, and gets mad at her mom for catching her. Still, she expects breakfast to be made for her in the morning. She’s naive and clueless about her own hypocrisy and completely lost — a portrayal of being 17 honestly doesn’t get more accurate than that. She’s a true confusing teenager who can be selfish and smart and rude and loving all at the same time.
Regardless, the movie just made them in love without showing them falling, making the romance plot feel suffocating with how much time was dedicated to it, but weak in emotion. For Clara and Miller, I can allow cliches in a rom-com — smoking, sneaking in through the window, and having the cheesiest (although I’ll admit adorable) “promposal” — the issue is I’m not sure if this movie should’ve been a rom-com at all. Despite the focus on the romance plots, there’s no real stakes at play. Not once did I wonder if or how they would find their way to each other. It’s pretty straightforward in how the relationships are formed.The details of this movie are actually very traumatic, and honestly it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief to believe Clara and Morgan aren’t building romantic connections as distraction or comfort for the tragedy they just went through.
As a family drama, it has the potential to be interesting if only it had committed to showing the grief process in all its messiness and tragedy. For people that just lost two family members at once, Morgan and Clara just didn’t have enough complexity for me.
While the film certainly touches on grief, it doesn’t dive into the complexity and confusion in the aftermath of losing a loved one that I would’ve liked to see to take the movie to the next level– instead it wades at the surface in an ocean of romance. Grief is different for everyone, yet this movie is so stereotypical that I wonder if any research went into it before simply making the characters cry and yell at each other. I wish it ultimately was more personal to the characters and explored the deep rooted trauma of losing a loved one and all the terrible, uncensored moments of life that come with dealing with death.
I will add out of fairness, that one scene came close to doing this, and it’s when Morgan finds the engravings in the door frame marking Clara’s height throughout the years — and Chris’s. Living in his childhood home and seeing the markings of his growth from birth to death, she is completely overwhelmed with emotion. He is everywhere in this house, and this moment is a reminder that despite trying to move past his infidelity and death by drinking bottles of wine and refusing to sleep in their bed, he lingers there. Many people say loved ones are “never really gone,” but instead of this being a comfort for Morgan, it’s a torment — and that’s the personalization of her grief. With Clara, we didn’t get anything nearly as personal.
In general, the movie felt lost on what genre it wanted to be in — and not in an interesting genre-bending way. It simply tried its best to have a little of everything, resulting in nothing standing out or being strong.
When I think of movies that dabble in themes of grief and romance, the first to come to mind is Hope Floats (1998), which navigates the tough mother-daughter relationship in the midst of confusing loss and new loves in such a brilliant way. It knows what its themes are, and it has that shining complexity that would have raised my opinion on Regretting You significantly.
Between all of its genre and thematic inconsistency, Regretting You had the potential to be a decent movie. With established actors like Dave Franco and upcoming favorites like McKenna Grace and Mason Thames who have dominated the new Hollywood scene, one would expect this to be a bigger success. If it spent a fraction less on the romances, maybe we could’ve gotten a beautiful story of a mother and daughter facing ups and downs together, and coming out better people in the end… but I guess that’s a movie for another day.
