There are big, all-consuming emotions contained within the cosy Netflix weepie The Life List, a film about grief, family, love, dreams, heartbreak and the courage to strive for the life you truly want rather than the one you’ve settled for. Based on the bestselling novel by Lori Nelson Spielman, it’s a proudly heart-over-head confection and given how the platform has become a reliable provider of movies and shows aimed at younger women who have been underserved elsewhere, it’ll probably find its audience.
But writer-director Adam Brooks, who knows this world better than most, having been involved in sturdy star-led studio films such as Definitely, Maybe; Wimbledon; and the hugely underrated Meg Ryan romcom French Kiss, can’t quite squeeze the tears or cheers out of material that so desperately wants them. It’s a film about experiences many of us should be able to identify with – the fear that we’re not living our best life, the realisation we’re in an ill-fitting relationship, the crushing loss of a parent – but it’s all too pat and prettified to register as believably human.
It’s a problem exacerbated by the choice of lead, the actor-singer Sofia Carson, who recently starred alongside Taron Egerton in Netflix’s wonderful smash-hit thriller Carry-On. Carson came of age as a Disney star, best known for the Descendants movies, and there’s something a little too much of that blemish-free PG world that clashes with what we’re supposed to believe about her character. She plays Alex, a scrappy, band-T-shirt wearing, basketball-loving “adorkable” mess who says the wrong thing and just can’t quite get her life together. Her boyfriend works in a record store but is developing a gory zombie video game while she has abandoned her dream of being a teacher to work for her mother’s cosmetics company.
The mother is played by Connie Britton, and while it would be nice to see the actor allowed to wrestle with more than another copy-paste maternal role, she brings a bit of weight to a film that sorely needs it. The film starts with Alex (late as usual!) drinking her way through a family party (classic!) where her boyfriend accidentally exposes himself to her niece and nephew (I mean!) before her mother shares some devastating news: the cancer she thought was in remission has returned and there’s nothing that can be done. Brooks wisely transitions straight to her funeral as Alex tries to pick up the pieces.
A reading of the will, from the family’s conveniently cute lawyer (Kyle Allen, of the incredibly charming high-concept romcom The Map of Tiny Perfect Things) reveals that Alex hasn’t been left in control of her family company and has instead been left with a DVD and a familiar scrap of paper: her life list of goals/dreams written as a child. In order to find out what her inheritance will be, Alex must tick off every one of them before the end of the year, each also unlocking a new DVD containing a personal message from beyond the grave. Alex’s 12 months are then filled with living (taking part in a mosh pit), laughing (doing standup) and loving (her final bullet point aims for true love).
It’s PS I Love You for the mother-daughter crowd, a potentially more interesting dynamic than a simple girl-loses-boy romance. There’s deep affection in the dynamic but also a sense of disappointment, that Alex hasn’t become the person she could have been because of the fear involved with taking a chance. Yet the film is ultimately more interested in Alex’s low-stakes love life over her familial relationships or personal growth or, gulp, career (her teaching ambitions are introduced, then swiftly, lazily ignored). The film is a reminder that sadly far too many films with female leads are still more focused on who they end up with rather than who they end up being.
The Life List does benefit from genuine, point-and-recognise locations in and around Manhattan and Brooklyn, an unusual on-the-ground gloss often not afforded to smaller Netflix titles and a successful hark back to the 90s/00s films it would like to be filed next to (that same sense of nostalgia might explain both the DVDs and why a song by the Ting Tings is used three times as an unofficial theme tune). But Carson, while competent, doesn’t have the magnetic pull and preternatural charm of the leads who dominated during that time, a freer sense of fun and a wilder spirit never really shining through, her performance as carefully smoothed out as the film surrounding her. The word “messy” is bandied around by its characters but The Life List is far too clean.
