“Regretting You,” a new adaptation from Colleen Hoover’s best-selling catalogue, arrives in theatres today. But just how cute can horrible tragedy be? Plus:
Photograph by Jessica Miglio / Paramount / Courtesy Everett
Katy Waldman
A staff writer covering books and culture.
The last time a Colleen Hoover novel was adapted for the big screen, it was “It Ends with Us,” starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, who also directed. The movie was a buzzy entry in the genre of trauma-tinged romance, which tends to follow white women with tousled hair as they discover their own strength and resilience after enduring terrible hardship. But, as you may remember, the film’s abuse plotline was soon overshadowed by real-life drama: Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment (which he has denied), and both actors eventually brought lawsuits against each other. (Baldoni’s suit was dismissed; Lively’s is set for trial next year.) Taylor Swift even caught some shrapnel, too.
Hoover, a BookTok mega-phenomenon whose novels have dominated the New York Times best-seller list, has several books in the process of being adapted. The latest movie, out today, arrives comparatively unclouded by scandal—unless you count the cheerful deployment of unimaginable tragedy to get the rom-com machinery up and running. “Regretting You,” with its charismatic, multigenerational cast, explores the comforting idea that bad things happen to good people, over and over, but that it’s never too late for a happy ending. Memorable—and familiar—lines include “We’re all broken and totally messed up,” “I should have fought harder for you,” and “I’ve wanted you since the day I met you.”
In the film, Morgan (Allison Williams) is the quiet and responsible sister to Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald), her hard-partying foil. During high school, Morgan dates Chris (Scott Eastwood), who is magnetic but inconsiderate, and her sister dates Chris’s best friend, Jonah (Dave Franco), who is shy and kind. The action then jumps seventeen years into the future, where Morgan and Chris’s daughter, Clara (Mckenna Grace), is now a teen-ager who resents her mom’s protectiveness and idolizes her freewheeling aunt. Jenny and Jonah have just had a baby. Then—spoiler alert—Chris and Jenny, both of whom are supposed to be at their separate workplaces, die together in a car crash.
This is very sad. But, as our protagonists suffer the worst losses and deepest betrayals of their lives, they are also very adorable—“I’m so good,” Morgan insists beatifically, drunk on white wine after her husband’s funeral—and very close to finding their soulmates.
In her books, Hoover is better known for delivering emotional catharsis than for fine-tuning the logic and realism of her plots. Onscreen, those priorities can translate into movies that feel at once formulaic and improbable. There is a difference between sweetly ridiculous and offensively stupid, and “Regretting You”—the movie version, at least—sometimes teeters toward the latter.
Morgan goes to extreme lengths to avoid telling her daughter Clara that Chris and Jenny were having an affair, but she doesn’t offer an alternative explanation for why the two were in a car together, making Clara’s continued incomprehension seem like a sign of severely willful ignorance—or brain damage. At one point, Jonah encourages Morgan to hurl eggs at a piece of art that dredges up painful memories. When he tenderly picks a piece of eggshell out of her hair, she giggles in amazement. “What? How did that get there,” she wonders, perhaps modelling the way the audience is supposed to react to each of the movie’s predictable turns.
There’s also a subplot involving an elderly cancer patient, a pizza restaurant that doesn’t deliver outside of the city, and a crackpot scheme to move the city-limit sign down the highway so that Clara’s crush can get his grandpa’s favorite pie sent to their home. The idea is that the character has a heart of gold and a rebellious streak, but it’s easy to get distracted: Does takeout not exist in the Hooververse? But, maybe, if you’re asking that question, you’re doing it wrong. Unlike the fantasies of Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers, these adaptations don’t want viewers to think, only to emote, and they’re popular because that’s what viewers want, too. Supposedly, there are four types of regret, and I experienced them all while watching “Regretting You,” even as I also laughed and teared up exactly where I was supposed to. I guess we’re all broken and totally messed up.
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