Regretting You

When dad “Chris” (Scott Eastwood) and her aunt “Jenny” (Willa Fitzgerald) are killed in a car accident, the young “Clara” (Mckenna Grace) finds her relationship with her now widowed mum (Allison Williams) becoming a bit strained. This might also be because she has recently started seeing local school heart-throb “Miller” (Mason Thames) who already has a girlfriend and so might just be a bit one-track minded? Also on her radar is her mother’s long term friend “Jonah” (Dave Franco) who was married to “Jenny” and so is now also grieving as he attempts to bring up his newborn baby. “Jonah” happens on some clues that explain, pretty uncomfortably, just why their respective spouses were in the same car and that changes their dynamic, a change they decide to keep from the young “Clara”. What chance they can keep their bombshell to themselves though - especially as their own relationship is looking like it is about to enliven? With the scene set, we focus mainly on the two teenagers and it becomes something shockingly cheesy. There’s way, way, too much dialogue and with Franco largely sidelined it becomes one of those predictable family melodramas that never really addresses any of the elephants on the room; takes a fairly cavalier attitude to grief and makes very little attempt to add depth to any of it’s principle characters especially that of “Miller” (whose closing scene creeped me out a little, too). It looks good, but is insubstantial fluff that ought to have gone straight to a streamer and Clancy Brown has come a long way from his time as the menacing “Kurgan” - and not in a good way, either. Regretting or forgetting? Both would seem to apply here.