The romantic drama Regretting You has great potential, but it suffers from poor execution.
Based on the novel by Colleen Hoover, Regretting You starts off with the seemingly happy family of main character Morgan Grant falling apart after a tragic accident kills her adult sister, Jenny, and her husband, Chris.
This tragedy leaves Morgan a widow, her teenage daughter without her father, and her late sister’s boyfriend, Jonah, a single dad of their young baby. This storyline is well thought out, yet the characters show barely any signs of grief, and the scenes of their funerals are short and brushed over.
The plot switches once again when it is revealed that Jenny and Chris had been having an affair, which explains why they were together during the time of the accident. This is far-fetched and begins the train of unrealistic switches to the plot.
After this is revealed to Morgan, she refuses to tell her daughter, Clara. Clara goes on to resent her mother for her coldness regarding the deaths of Chris and Jenny, without knowing the full story. Because of this, she begins to rebel against her mother and starts to go out with a boy her mother has forbidden her from seeing.
This is another reason that the movie is executed poorly. It is a completely unrealistic reaction for a person who finds out about the death of two of their closest family members.
As the movie progresses, Morgan and Jonah realize that all this time that they were in love. They start secretly seeing each other until they are caught by Clara, sparking yet another breakdown and fight between them.
All of these extreme changes make the movie harder to take seriously. And the fast pace of the movie makes everything shallow and difficult for audiences to process.
Overall this movie has a pretty solid storyline, but when it is crushed into such a short running time, it is an overly dramatic and senseless portrayal. It would have worked better if it had been longer and allowed the characters to actually process the conflicts instead of being seemingly unaffected by them.
