The Life List Review: An Overlong and Uninvolving Romantic Drama
The stunning Sofia Carson headlines The Life List, a new movie from Adam Brooks, who is no stranger to the romance genre. He directed Definitely, Maybe and also wrote movies like French Kiss, Wimbledon and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Judging by his filmography, one would easily expect The Life List to be a familiar romantic drama that stays in its comfort zone. And frankly, I’m okay with that as long as the story is at least competently told to have me root for the character’s journey.
Adapted from Lori Nelson Spielman’s novel of the same name, The Life List gets off to a promising start as we follow Carson’s Alex Rose, who used to be a teacher but is now working in the marketing department in her mother’s (Connie Britton’s Elizabeth) cosmetics company. She has a nerdy boyfriend named Finn (Michael Rowland), who is a video-game developer, and the two stay together in his apartment.
Things seem to be fine at first, even though they have to deal with the annoying questions typically associated with family gatherings. Questions like tying the knot and having kids, which are something her brothers Lucas (Dario Ladani Sanchez) and Julian (Federico Rodriguez) already achieved in their own family phases. In the meantime, her mother has cancer and dies shortly afterwards, leaving a void in Alex’s heart. She misses her a lot, and now, everything changes.
Soon, Brad (Kyle Allen), the young lawyer in charge of Alex’s late mother’s will, meets up with the family in his office. While the family members get the inheritance, Alex somehow needs to earn it by fulfilling the titular list written on a sheet of paper. The list in question requires Alex to finish each task successfully. But there’s a catch: She needs to complete them by the end of the year or she can forget about her share of inheritance, which comes in the form of a red envelope.
So, each time she is done with one task, she’ll get a DVD from Brad that her late mother already pre-recorded before her death. She’s been living a stagnant life when we first met her, and the fact that her late mother denies her an easy way out to receive part of her inheritance is because Elizabeth wants her to rediscover herself, which is supposed to reflect the title of this movie.
When Alex subsequently tries her best to fulfil the tasks on the list, such as learning how to play “Clair de Lune”, performing a stand-up comedy on stage and going back to teaching, I was expecting these scenes to be executed in a way that feels inspiring. Too bad that isn’t the case here in The Life List, as Alex’s so-called journey of self-discovery is simply glossed over like it’s a walk in the park. The movie barely carries any weight in her plight, as she seems to be achieving one task after another without much difficulty.
Everything here is cosy and lightweight, as if Adam Brooks’s direction prefers to play it so safe within the confines of a Hollywood fantasy minus the depiction of real-world consequences. Even when Alex tries to find her true love, which leads to the introduction of Garrett (Sebastian de Souza), the romance moments and how the eventual ups and downs in their relationship are disappointingly superficial. At one point, there’s a subplot revolving around Alex discovering the truth about her family, but then again, it’s all perfunctory, and so is the rest of the movie, paced in a monotonous manner.
It’s a pity that the movie wasted Sofia Carson’s otherwise magnetic screen presence along with the rest of the cast, from Kyle Allen to Connie Britton and Sebastian de Souza, resulting in nothing more than forgettable performances. It doesn’t help either when The Life List feels unnecessarily overlong, clocking a little over two hours. And by the time the movie ended, I was left wondering what’s the whole point of watching Alex fulfilling the list was, if everything felt dull instead of something profound.
The Life List is currently streaming on Netflix.
