Colleen Hoover’s 'Regretting You' Is The Flat White Of Film Adaptations — Smooth, Pretty, And Forgettable

There’s a point somewhere between It Ends With Us and Regretting You when you start to wonder if Colleen Hoover’s world is just one long cinematic universe of unprocessed feelings and kitchen-counter wisdom. Because, once again, we find ourselves in small-town suburbia, where grief looks pretty and everyone’s trauma has an Instagram filter.

You know that feeling when you bite into a Jolly Rancher expecting something new, but it’s the same old artificial sweetness in shinier wrapping? That’s Regretting You, Josh Boone’s (The Fault in Our Stars) glossy, pastel-hued adaptation that’s equal parts melodrama, déjà vu, and mild regret.

Hoover’s particular brand of chaos is in full display here: generational trauma, slow-burn romance, a fatal car crash, and dialogue so quotable it could live on a Pinterest board next to “Live, Laugh, Love.” 

The Plot

The film opens in small-town Americana, where high school dreams and adult responsibilities blur into one beige emotional canvas. Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) is young, in love, and pregnant with her high school sweetheart Chris’s (Scott Eastwood) child. Her sister Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) and best friend Jonah (Dave Franco) are wrapped up in their own budding romance, the kind that looks designed for a CW pilot.

Then, in a flash of Hoover-verse logic, the story jumps 17 years forward. The problem? Everyone looks the same. Time is a concept, not a visual. Morgan is now a housewife whose marriage feels as worn out as her countertops, while her daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) is an overachieving teenager navigating first love, grief, and a general sense of existential doom.

When a tragic accident claims the lives of Chris and Jenny, Morgan and Jonah’s old bond resurfaces, along with secrets that make you sigh rather than gasp. Meanwhile, Clara begins a tentative romance with Miller Adams (Mason Thames), the token sensitive boy-next-door who makes short films, tends to his sick grandfather, and chews on lollipops instead of cigarettes. You can almost hear the Wattpad comments typing themselves: “He’s different. He gets me.”

Colleen Hoover Needs To Be Stopped

Let’s talk about the elephant in the tear-stained living room: Hoover. At this point, she’s less an author and more a cultural phenomenon, the queen of emotional chaos for the TikTok generation. Her stories are comfort food for her readers who crave heightened feelings over narrative logic, and that’s fine in book form. But when translated to screen, that same chaos becomes… visual pain.

Hoover’s characters are always processing, crying, healing, or breaking up, often all in one scene. They speak in slogans that sound like they were written in cursive font over a sunset stock image: “You deserve to be happy. No regrets, right?” “We both deserve to be happy, okay?” You can feel the script pausing for a dramatic effect that never lands.

It’s not that Hoover’s work shouldn’t exist. It’s that Hollywood has confused virality for versatility. Just because her novels top BookTok every week doesn’t mean every single one needs to become a movie. There are so many other romance authors, Talia Hibbert, Emily Henry, and Taylor Jenkins Reid, whose stories balance emotional heft with craft. 

Performances: Great Cast, Tragic Script

If Regretting You has any saving grace, it’s the cast, a lineup of genuinely talented actors trying their best to give soul to a screenplay that reads like a group therapy pamphlet.

Allison Williams (Get Out, M3GAN) is, as always, a master of the micro-expression, a woman on the verge, too put-together to crumble. She brings quiet dignity to Morgan Grant, though the writing leaves her stranded in a loop of long stares and generic sadness. Dave Franco, as Jonah, leans into his gentle, puppy-eyed persona, grounding the film with sincerity even when the dialogue betrays him. But do we love him, yes! He is definitely back this year with Together, this film, and the upcoming release, Now You See Me: Now You Don't. 

Mckenna Grace (Gifted, The Handmaid’s Tale, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) continues to prove she’s one of the most emotionally intelligent young actors working today. Unfortunately, her character, Clara, is written like an algorithmic mash-up of every teen heroine ever, but ultimately shallow in the way only poorly written teens can be. Mason Thames (The Black Phone, How To Train Your Dragon Live Action) fares better; he’s likable and quietly magnetic.

Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald show up long enough to remind us what the film could’ve been, two attractive, underutilized people whose subplot vanishes as quickly as it begins. And Clancy Brown, in a small supporting turn, adds the kind of gravitas that makes you wish he were in an entirely different movie.

It’s not the performances that fail her; it’s the ecosystem around them. These are actors doing solid work in a film that gives them dialogue like “You were my first everything” and expects that to count as depth.

The Hoover Cinematic Universe (HCU)

Between It Ends With Usand Regretting You, a pattern has emerged: pastel grief, decorative trauma, and women rediscovering themselves through heartbreak and beige interiors. It’s like Big Little Lies but stripped of bite and intellect. Director Josh Boone knows how to make things look emotional, the golden-hour lighting, the trembling close-ups, the slow pans across kitchen tables. What he doesn’t manage is to make any of it feel emotional.

There’s a Suki Waterhouse song somewhere in there, a rare, brief moment where the film finds its rhythm and you think, “Okay, maybe this is working.” And then, it collapses again under the weight of its own earnestness.

The problem isn’t predictability, it’s the lack of evolution. Hoover’s world is one where everyone talks about growth, but no one actually changes.

The Aesthetics of Emotional Beige

Visually, Regretting You is soft-focus heaven, all washed-out blues and cozy cream tones, the cinematic equivalent of a lifestyle influencer’s feed. The cinematography is warm and inviting, but also strangely hollow, like an IKEA showroom for sadness. 

Watching it feels a bit like sipping a flat white from a trendy café. It’s pleasant, mildly comforting, and competently made, but the flavor profile is so safe you forget you even ordered it. There’s a lack of risk here, an absence of grit. For a story supposedly about loss and rediscovery, the emotional range sits somewhere between muted and mildly teary.

The Verdict: Bland, But You Do You, Boo

Regretting You is not an unwatchable film. It’s just an unnecessary one. It’s pleasant enough for a Sunday stream, but too hollow to linger. Like its title, the movie flirts with introspection but never quite commits, and by the end, you’re not regretting watching it, but you’re definitely not recommending it either.

If you’re a card-carrying member of the Colleen Hoover cult, go ahead, cry, swoon, and post your “no one writes emotions like her” Reel. You’ll have a great time. 

The film is in theatres now.

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