Fans of Colleen Hoover saw a win with last year’s book-to-screen adaptation of It Ends with Us, which made big box office bank, despite (or perhaps assisted by) all of the legal drama between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Will the author go two-for-two on the big screen when Regretting You hits the 2025 movie calendar on October 24? Critics screened the film ahead of its release, and they have strong opinions about the movie’s tone and melodramatic script.
The trailer for Regretting You takes us into the relationship between high school friends Morgan (Allison Williams) and Jonah (Dave Franco) and the whirlwind romance between Morgan’s teenage daughter Clara (McKenna Grace) and Jonah’s student Miller (Mason Thames). Jacob Oller of AV Club gives it a C-, but says all of the clichés suggest some self-awareness, which makes the movie more ridiculous than detestable. Oller writes:
A multigenerational love story of fairy tale logic, moralizing melodrama, and a Taylor Swift-like idolization of all things high school, Regretting You jams a season’s worth of soap opera silliness into a two-hour romance. The best that can be said about the film is that The Fault In Our Stars director Josh Boone, well-versed with the teen weepy, sometimes approaches the schlock with a bit of self-deflating slyness—something more attuned to the audience’s eyerolls and the cast’s barely-hidden smirks than to the serious source material.
Owen Gleiberman of Variety says the film attempts to copy what It Ends with Us did by using soap opera conventions to lure viewers inside its tumultuous relationship, which worked because it was surprising and moving. Regretting You, the critic says, is just cheesy. He continues:
Regretting You is a soap opera-meets-YA romance that offers the audience some hooks but can’t hide its essential cheesiness. This one, too, is trying to be an A-list affair, with good actors doing their best to class up the proceedings. Yet when the big twists happen, they have a forehead-slapping quality. The film will likely work for a certain audience (notably teenagers who can swoon over the ‘tempestuous’ but really puppy-love romance between two sensitive and adorable high-school seniors). But to the audience that turned out for It Ends with Us, Regretting You may provoke as much unintentional laughter as it does lumps in the throat.
Richard Lawson of THR says having the 30-something actors, including Dave Franco, play 17-year-olds in flashbacks makes Regretting You feel off right from the start, and it never finds a tonal balance between the characters' grief and the love story. It may be enough to end the Colleen Hoover adaptation craze, Lawson says, writing:
What truly hampers Regretting You is its inescapable unoriginality, its plodding, uninventive, unthoughtful attempts at swoon and heartbreak. With its cloyingly sun-dappled North Carolina backdrops, maudlin score and severely undeveloped emotional and social intelligence, the film often evokes a dreaded entity: the cinematic oeuvre of Nicholas Sparks. … Regretting You winds up just as soggy as any Sparks slop, carelessly laying waste to whatever might have differentiated it, even elevated it.
Brian Truitt of USA TODAY also compares this movie to one inspired by Nicholas Sparks, writing that Colleen Hoover aims to “leave no tear unjerked.” The adult half of the movie is “insufferable and overwrought,” Truitt says, as Allison Williams’ talent is wasted. The teens’ story, however, saves it from being a complete loss. The critic rates it 2.5 out of 4 stars and says:
Fortunately, Grace and Thames are so cute together that the grown-ups don’t even need to matter. (The one exception: Clancy Brown as Miller's extremely lovable grandpa.) The kids navigate plenty of teen-movie tropes, too, but their combined magnetism lifts the entire movie. In another era, these two would be the king and queen of rom-coms – of all the various love pairings, theirs feels the most genuine amid so much artificial sweetness.
Damon Wise of Deadline agrees with other critics that the movie’s tone is all over the place. It feels like a Hallmark movie with unnecessary ironic smarts, Wise writes, and the cast deserves credit for being able to play it with a straight face. The critic continues:
For two very long hours you’ll be wondering what year it is, where you are, and what the hell you’re doing there. Rarely was a film more aptly titled, unless, of course, you’re a fan of [Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us]. ... Regretting You is a similarly ridiculous and overwrought slice of melodrama, leavened with strange moments of comedy that leave you wondering if the whole thing isn’t some kind of bizarre art project, an elaborate, camp parody of the very notion of romantic literature itself.
The critics don’t seem to consider this a worthy follow-up to It Ends with Us, as far as Colleen Hoover stories go, with complaints of tonal imbalance, a melodramatic script and some unintentionally funny (and cringey) moments. The actors are undeniably talented, though, so if you want to give this movie a try, don’t let these reviews stop you. Regretting You hits theaters on Friday, October 24.
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