It’s hard to expect much from a standard Netflix romcom, and although it has some good bits, the movie, “My Oxford Year,” was overall a disappointing watch. The film relies on too many cliches to count, and the leading actress is largely robotic and unemotional.
Anna De La Vega, the main character, played by Sofia Carson, is an American student who travels to Oxford to take a year for herself studying poetry before starting a high-paying corporate job in New York, but ultimately falls in love with her professor, and it ends up changing her life.
The director, Iain Morris, produced convincing cinematography with interesting camera angles, but the plot of the movie was subpar. The lighting was effective, and it contributed to the moods as the plot changed, and the sets were varied and realistic.
One of the parts of this movie that struck on a high note is the humor. It has some funny jokes, and if the plot were focused on her friendships and journey at Oxford, the movie would have been significantly better. The side romance between Tom, played by Nikhil Parmar, and Maggie, played by Esme Kingdom, was honestly much more intriguing and genuine than the one between Anna (Sofia Carson), and Jamie (Corey Mylchreest).
Sofia Carson’s acting in this movie just wasn’t as real as it could have been with a different leading actress. She barely showed emotion, and there was a sad lack of humor on her part. She just wasn’t really suited for this role, considering that she and Corey Mylchreest had absolutely no chemistry.
The cliches in this movie were so stereotypical, and they were always focused on the wide-eyed American in Britain. There’s the bad boy who’s actually not that bad, and has a terminal illness, but on top of that, his parents are filthy rich, have a huge estate, and he isn’t on speaking terms with his father. There’s the American girl who is a stereotypical, sarcastic, working class anglophile who can’t wait to smell the books at the ancient libraries at Oxford.
There’s the side character who’s whole personality consists of being flamboyantly gay and the ugly duckling who gets a makeover. There’s also the girlfriend of Jamie’s dead brother, who warns Anna off of Jamie, and who Anna believes is dating Jamie.
Another cliche was the boy with a terminal illness, who doesn’t want to live out the last of his life in the hospital, so he decides not to keep trying to get his cancer treated. His father disagrees with him and they fight. The reveal of the illness was sudden and instead of building up emotions in a more subtle way, the director just went in with the terminal illness trope to garner sympathy from the audience.
The worst thing about this movie was that instead of having a journey of self-discovery in Oxford, arguably the most prestigious university in the world, Anna sacrifices her career for a man who will soon die, when the movie really shouldn’t have been about him.
It’s sad to see such a cliched and pointless movie when, instead of wasting time on this wannabe rom-com, Netflix could have given people a film that truly reflected Oxford University’s role in shaping and growing Anna’s life and future, as the title, “My Oxford Year,” conveys.
