I never turn down free tickets for a movie, especially one that I want to actually see. So when I was sent tickets for Regretting You, I trekked over to the Regal at Atlantic Station to check it out. Regretting You is adapted from the Colleen Hoover (CoHo) book of the same name. As expected, the theater was filled with around 90% women.
The movie stars Allison Williams, McKenna Grace and Dave Franco (yum!), and is directed by Josh Boone, who directed another book to movie adaptation, The Fault In Our Stars from the John Green book. I definitely liked The Fault In Our Stars more, both book and movie.
The plot:
Two sisters date best friends in high school, but they date their polar opposites. The quiet sister ends up pregnant and marries her high school sweetheart. Fast forward to the present: their daughter is now 16 when an accident turns their lives upside down, and secrets are revealed. The daughter also befriends the most popular guy in school while this drama is unfolding in her family life.
Things I loved about the movie:
- The evolving relationship between mother (Allison Williams) and daughter (McKenna Grace).
- The Grant house was like another character in the movie. Like the mother and daughter and their relationship, the house evolved as they did. And I liked the house itself.
- Dave Franco. If it’s legal to think and say it, I think he’s even more adorable than his brother.
- Another movie filmed in Atlanta. In the book, the story is set in a small town in Texas, but in the movie, they are in a small town in North Carolina. I am curious where they did the exterior shots, and also where the Grant family home is! I recognized Refuge Coffee in Clarkston, and I love that they kept the name Refuge Coffee in the movie! After some googling, I found some scenes were filmed in Alpharetta/Johns Creek, and a high school in Duluth, but Miller’s house and the two-lane stretches of road are definitely not ITP ATL or OTP suburbia. I did see a couple of two lane roads and out of the way country houses when I was in Cumming last month.
- The plot twists… while these are technically from the book, they translate really well to the big screen. The plot twists so that just when the characters start getting comfortable with the changes in their life… BAM! Plot twist.
Things I didn’t like about the movie:
- Having the adult actors play themselves as teenagers was a bad call. I’m of the generation that grew up watching 20-somethings play teenagers on 90210 and even Dawson’s Creek, but I’m not a teenager anymore. Envisioning Allison Williams as a mother of a teenager is one thing, but seeing her in flashbacks as a teen herself? Not so much.
- Again, another adaptation from a book. You may know of my disdain for original scripts in Hollywood… while this wasn’t an original script, but at least it wasn’t a sequel or a remake. I read the book a few years ago, and it is definitely the better of her books, probably because it wasn’t as steamy as her later books. This is the second CoHo book to be made into a movie after It Ends With Us with Blake Lively. I’m sure the studio is thrilled there is no legal drama around this one. Hoover, along with Allison Williams, McKenna Grace and Dave Franco, served as executive producers.Â
- Obvious product placement. You see Pepsi right away when the camera follows a character into the store. I guess it was inevitable with the movie being set in North Carolina? But then, AMC gets a big plug as one of the main characters works at a theater, which was very odd because I was watching at a Regal movie theater! As a marketing person, Pepsi missed out on a prime opportunity to plug their products again since Regal serves Pepsi products. I’m sure Pepsi had to review the footage at AMC to make sure no Coca-Cola logos were visible.
All in all, I really liked this story when I read the book, and I liked it okay, as a movie. I’m not sure if I would pay to see it in the theater, but it is definitely worth a stream, especially if you’re a CoHo fan. I am weary of every book and movie being adapted for a streaming series. Making a movie out of a book felt… a little old-fashioned.
Sravanthi Meka 