Regretting You review: Like eating plain white bread for two hours

Some spoilers follow. I’ve avoided the biggest ones but this is the sort of film in which it only rains to provide a dramatic backdrop for a kiss, so I think you’ll have a pretty good idea of where it’s going from the opening scene.

First up, I have to ‘fess up. I haven’t read the novel from which Regretting You was adapted, so I can’t comment on whether the film does justice to the book. However, I’m fairly certain that, for Colleen Hoover fans, it will push enough of the right buttons to make it worth the price of admission. But that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve better.

Regretting You opens with an introduction to two mismatched teenage couples. Sensible Morgan is dating popular Chris. Meanwhile equally sensible Jonah is dating Morgan’s high-spirited sister Jenny.

We know that Morgan and Jonah are sensible because they’re sitting alone at a beach party, passing a Pepsi back and forth. Meanwhile Chris and Jenny yell “Woo-hoo!” a lot and play beer pong. This is the type of in-depth characterisation you can expect to enjoy for the next two hours.

But before you can even say: Hey! Those sensible teenagers should be together, Morgan announces that she’s pregnant and the action leaps forward 17 years.

Everyone acts as though they’ve been anaesthetised and forced to wear pastels

(Bear in mind that this is the type of film in which actors play a teen in one scene and then an identical thirty-something version of themselves in the next, only with flatter hair. )

17 years later is now, in that everyone has newish iPhones, but it’s also a world all of its own in which everyone acts as though they’ve been anaesthetised and forced to wear pastels.

Sensible Morgan (Allison Williams, deserving better) has grown up into the type of person who’d categorise milk as a spicy drink. She’s good at baking cakes – something that several characters remark on while she’s icing a cake, therefore proving it – and that’s all she gets by way of personality. Actually, that’s not true. Later on in the film, we learn she has a huge dream she’s been stifling all these years: to decorate her house. Will she do it? The stakes are high.

She and popular Chris (Scott Eastwood, nepo baby son of Clint) are now married, with a teenage daughter of their own, Clara (Mckenna Grace). I feel that it’s only fair to warn you that other characters often call her Clare-Bear. I wish someone had warned me.

Meanwhile, Morgan’s sister Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) has a baby with Jonah (Dave Franco). She’s still fun, which is shown by the fact that she accepts a beer. However, she has a slapdash way of icing a cake, which is the first sign that we should be suspicious of her.

It’s clear to anyone who’s ever watched a film that cake-making Morgan should be with Jonah. After all, he wears glasses and speaks quietly. But how can that ever be?

The answer is: efficiently. A plot device removes most obstacles to their love in the first half hour of the film, leaving an excruciatingly long hour and a half for Morgan and Jonah to get it together. This is achieved extremely clumsily, with him knocking on her door at least three times to further their plot line.

It’s hard to understand what Dave Franco is doing in this film when his character might as well be called ‘man with glasses’

Thank goodness for the parallel love story, which, if it isn’t any more convincing, does at least get us out of the house. In return, however, you’ll have to accept a painful level of cringe. It kicks off when daughter Clara gives a ride home to “the coolest boy in school” Miller Adams (Mason Thames, who plays Hiccup in the live-action How to Train Your Dragon).

Their relationship is characterised by a series of awkward situations and misunderstandings, often involving Morgan in overprotective form. Both Clara and Miller have wacky POC best friends (Miller’s buddy is played by Ethan Costanilla), which is a crappy casting trope that’s foregrounded white actors for years. But it’s difficult to be annoyed here, as most of the film’s (extremely mild) humour is thanks to Sam Morelos’ performance as bestie Lexie.

The rest of the humour is dependant on non-jokes such as joshing over whether pineapple on pizza is acceptable and your own ability to laugh at unconvincing plot points.

Mason Thames and Mckenna Grace similarly outshine their adult counterparts, although they have considerably more to work with. It’s hard to understand what Dave Franco is doing in this film when his character might as well be called ‘man with glasses’. At one stage, someone actually says to him: “You were so mysterious – with the glasses.” There’s no further elaboration.

Director Josh Boone has done a better job previously in blending romance and sorrow, when helming his adaptation of weepie The Fault in Our Stars, so it’s perhaps surprising how swiftly he navigates through scenes of grief (indicated by wine and a blanket, or clothes on floor plus stack of pizza boxes on table) to get to the good stuff, ie couples kissing in front of fairy lights.

There’s often pressure to “let people enjoy things”, but there’s no time more important than now, when AI art is starting to become a reality, for us to be demanding about the media we consume. When studios know that a film will likely make money with less effort, less effort is what we get. There are at least three more Colleen Hoover adaptations in the works and I hope that fans will be demanding, and ask for better than this.

Regretting You opens in cinemas in the UK and the US on 24 October.