Regretting You
Synopsis: Woman was a teen mom, now she and her teen daughter go through a crisis. Lots of melodrama.
Torrid love affairs, family secrets and flashbacks. Good! I could use some melodrama. Regretting You is based on the Colleen Hoover novel of the same name. Her stories are like telenovelas for white women.
Just as in It Ends with Us, another of CoHo’s books that went from page to screen, there is a young woman with a promising future whose plans are derailed by a man. Also, the flashbacks feature the protagonist and her boyfriend finding first love.
Thirty-something Morgan (Allison Williams) is making her own birthday cake at her mid-century ranch house in small town North Carolina. She texts her daughter, high school senior Clara (McKenna Grace). Clara, driving home from a play rehearsal, ignores the texts. She spots Miller, a classmate, (Mason Thames) roadside. He’s uprooting the county limits sign. She pulls over and he tells her he’s moving it little by little so that his grandfather’s house becomes within the local pizza delivery zone. She offers him a lift back to his grandpa’s. They exchange info about each other’s college applications. He wants to go to film school, but his family is broke. She wants to study acting @ ‘State.’ She says her mom wouldn’t like it if she went to California. They both seem eager to leave their not-cool-like-Asheville town. After they flirt a little, she heads home. Meanwhile…
Morgan’s sister, Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald), has just arrived with her several months old baby, Elijah. Because this is the movies, the new mom looks like she lost all the baby weight during delivery. The baby daddy is a bespectacled Dave Franco—I mean Dave Franco as Jonah. And we’ve seen him at the beginning of the movie in a flashback…
It’s Morgan’s senior year and she’s riding shotgun in a car driven by her boyfriend Chris (Scott Eastwood). They’re headed to a lakeside party with her sister Jenny (maybe a year or two younger than Morgan, I guess) and Jonah. All of the actors are in their late thirties, so filters and soft lighting are required. Chris and Jenny are frolicking at the water’s edge with other ‘teens.’ He seems like a stereotypical jock and she has a party girl vibe. I feel like the girls’ parents maybe should’ve told Morgan to keep an eye on her little sister. Well, she sort of is; sitting up on the grass next to Jonah, looking down at the lake. Jonah adjusts his glasses, turns to Morgan and sputters: How did we end up with our exact opposites? Morgan frowns and says: I’m pregnant. Okay, so maybe Morgan isn’t one to give advice to her sister.
17 years later…
Morgan has become responsible after the demands of teenage parenthood. So has Chris; he arrives home from work and gives his wife a quick kiss. While Jonah goes back to the car to get stuff for the baby, Jenny says she and Jonah will marry soon, even though he hasn’t proposed. Morgan looks concerned. But Jonah just moved back to town a year ago! Jenny laughs. Okay, so Jenny is a flake.
Clara seems fairly grounded. She has a decent family dynamic. She gets along with her dad and she willingly spends time with her mom. She’s working on a vision board heavy on her theater aspirations. Clara tells her mom that she too needs to find her passion.
Clara is preoccupied with Miller. She texts her Aunt Party Girl on the way to school, telling her that Miller is ‘the coolest guy in school.’ Hopefully that doesn’t mean that he’s a drug dealer. Clara laments that he has a girlfriend. Her aunt advises her to not pursue it: You don’t want to be the other woman – trust me.
The day after Morgan’s b-day, Chris is off to work and Jenny is back to her job after finishing maternity leave. But it’s not a day like any other—okay, so the rest of the movie is based on what happens next, so if you don’t want to know, skip to Movie Loon’s Movie Review Shortcut. Otherwise…
Out of the blue, Morgan gets a call from the hospital. Never a good sign. Chris has been in a car accident. So has Jenny. No, they didn’t crash into each other. At the hospital she meets up with Jonah. He asks why the two were in the same car—why weren’t they at their jobs? If you recall the flashback to the energy between the two at the lakeside party back in high school, that may be a clue. Rushing down a corridor, Morgan and Jonah stop in their tracks when a cluster of morose-looking doctors look their way.
Lots of tears and confusion during the funerals. Clara abruptly leaves the service to catch her breath outside. Miller, ‘coolest guy in school,’ follows her outside. Distraught Clara wants to get away, so off they go in his car. Clara announces that she wants to get high. Miller says he’s friends with a stoner who can hook them up. Because Miller is cool he knows the worlds of sex and drugs, but because he is a good guy, we’ll see that he doesn’t pressure Clara.
After the funeral, Morgan checks her phone to see where Clara has disappeared to. She’s steaming mad when she pulls up to their car in a parking lot. She yells at Clara to get in her car. Then she spends a minute glaring at Miller. After high Clara seats herself, Morgan announces: You’re grounded.
Clara doesn’t wonder what her dad and aunt were up to, but Morgan and Jonah sure do. Morgan does some day drinking. Without texting first, Jonah shows up at tipsy Morgan’s with baby Elijah. I can’t do this says Jonah, handing over the baby and leaving with tears in his eyes. So now it’s up to Morgan to care for the baby of unknown daddy parentage.
Jonah takes leave from his job as a teacher at the local high school. Morgan goes to a Target-like store where she can fill her shopping cart with cheap wine and diapers. Fortunately, baby Elijah is fine with this. Being an infant, he doesn’t know what’s going on. Who’s mommy? Who’s daddy? He doesn’t care as long as he gets a babba from a kindly person.
Because Clara also does not know what is going on, she heads out on the war path to Jonah’s place. She finds a forlorn Jonah slumped on the couch with pizza boxes surrounding him. Clara shakes her head and says If the school board saw this, you’d be out of a job! Lol, it takes a lot more than a bunch of empty pizza boxes to get a teacher fired. Maybe embezzlement or sexual abuse.
Jonah sees the light, recognizing that he loves baby Elijah, no matter who the bio dad may be. He rushes to Morgan’s to retrieve baby. This is good because Morgan is busy; busy trying to keep Clara away from Miller. Is he getting Clara high? Is he getting Clara pregnant? Despite being grounded, Clara comes and goes in her car as she pleases. Getting home in the middle of the night, she enters the house to see her mom sitting up waiting for her. Exasperated, she concedes, I know: I’m grounded, before tromping off to her room.
I do believe that Morgan has found her passion: grounding her daughter. She can put pix of Miller and weed with X’s over them on her vision board, along with verboten places in town, like Jonah’s bedroom and the local stoner hangouts. But we see that Miller is actually a nice guy who has stuff in common with Clara. What we don’t see though is a cool guy. But Jonah is a film geek, and that’s more interesting. After breaking up with his never-seen gf, he arranges a private movie screening at the cinema he works at. Clara looks at him admiringly and says I want to have sex with you on prom night. Oh, wow, girl make sure you use birth control! And let’s hope that Morgan doesn’t get wind of this or Clara will be triple grounded.
Fortunately, through pal-ing around with Jonah and quitting drinking, Morgan is feeling a little more energized. Visiting Morgan one night—while Clara is out, of course – Jonah encourages her to have a little fun by throwing eggs at a painting belonging to Chris. They end up laughing and reminiscing. Flashback afoot!
Back in high school, before Morgan got preggers, she is swimming with Jonah and they are having a moment. Once again, they are clearly the age of people you see at the Y taking their kids to hockey and swim practice. But we play along. It seems the teens have feelings for each other. Maybe they still do. But if anything happens, it will be Clara’s turn to ground mother from her affections. I wished that I could appear to Clara onscreen while she’s out being grounded and tell her Listen! Your Party Girl Aunt and overgrown Big Man on Campus dad were hooking up! Your mom has to follow her heart now!
The action builds to a crescendo where people will be crying, yelling and generally emoting like crazy. Understandable; Clara is sick of being grounded, Jonah and Morgan need to find out what happened between their exes and someone needs to pay attention to that baby.
I never knew that small towns could be this exciting! Or that being grounded in North Carolina means going out more than ever.
P.S. Set in North Carolina, but filmed in and around Atlanta, Georgia
PPS. Yay! Morgan finds a work passion to replace her grounding obsession
Movie Loon’s Movie Review Shortcut:
Grade: C
Cut to the Chase: Not a good movie exactly, but good fun.
Humor Highlight: When Jonah tries to talk to a peeved Clara in the hallway at the high school, she stalks off, saying I have class! Looking defeated, he calls after her It’s my class and we’re both late. Hope they don’t get grounded.