Film Review — Regretting You

Regretting You is the kind of title that’s a gift to a critic. If the film is dreadful (and in this case, it is), one can have so much fun making obvious jokes. The aptly named Failure to Launch (2006), for instance. Or the lamentable Hope Floats (1998), of which I once remarked: “So does poo.” Then there’s Mark Kermode’s scathing summary of Eat Pray Love (2010), which he hilariously referred to as “Eat, Pray, Love, Vomit”. Yes, all right, I’m procrastinating, but in addition to regretting seeing the film, I’m regretting having to write about it. So, please allow me this brief moment of pleasure.

Last year, I found Colleen Hoover adaptation It Ends With Us (2024) glib and predictable to a fault, but not without a modicum of enjoyable soapy wallow. Yes, I’m aware there was an almighty behind-the-scenes spat, and no, I couldn’t give an airborne fornication about any of it. I’m here to review films, not celebrity gossip about who is suing whom. In the case of Regretting You, another Hoover adaptation, I’m yet to hear of any offscreen drama. As for the drama onscreen, it is contrived, facile, and wholly unconvincing, performed by a cast that resembles Insta-filtered automatons. To paraphrase Syndrome, the villain in The Incredibles (2004), when everyone’s hot, no one will be.