My Oxford Year

⭐⭐+1/2

Expectation: 🥰 😭

Reality: 🙂☹️

This review is strictly of the film - I’m not here to compare it to the book. I don’t think that’s fair to do to adaptations, and I haven’t even read the book in this case (you can grab the book here, note that as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases).

I’m the type of girl who wants to be completely emotionally wrecked by a good story. If it’s sad, I want to sob. If someone wrongs the main character, I want to get angry. None of that happened here. I just kind of shrugged at the end of every scene.

Netflix’s My Oxford Year is perfectly average. It has a beginning, middle, and end. The story is predictable, which is the case with most romances so that didn’t bother me, but I didn’t feel like I got to know any of the characters enough to get invested in what happened to them.

It’s often expected with this genre that supporting characters will be one-dimensional. Both of Anna’s friends are upbeat and excited to support her and we barely learn anything about their lives unconnected to her. We don’t learn much about Jamie’s father beyond what makes him one of the villains of Jamie and Anna’s story.

What surprised and disappointed me was how little I learned about Anna and Jamie. Sofia Carson and Corey Mylchreest are both good actors, so I think the issue might lie in the material given to them to work with. The whole thing fell flat for me.

I adore Sofia Carson, but she seems to be playing versions of the same character in all of her Netflix films. I know Sofia can elicit different emotions on camera, but I’m not getting enough information about the characters in the stories she’s telling to be able to see them as distinct people. All of her Netflix roles have been sweet, but I’ve wanted more - more character, more story, more layers.

Spoilers ahead!

Corey Mylchreest gave a most heart-wrenching performance in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, and I could write a full dissertation about Young King George. All I can tell you about Jamie is that he’s sick, newly in love, and doesn’t want treatment. Besides Queen Charlotte being a series (therefore having more time to tell the story), the other difference I can point out between Queen Charlotte and My Oxford Year is the writing. Queen Charlotte is character forward. The story unfolds as we get to know the characters. Without Queen Charlotte and King Henry, there is no story, and these characters could not have been played by just anyone. My Oxford Year, on the other hand, is a story about two young people falling in love while one of them is dying, and honestly the specific people in love didn’t matter. They could’ve been played by anyone.

Cecelia was actually my favorite character in this movie. Played by Poppy Gilbert, Cecelia felt like a real person. Throughout the film, I got to know her, I understood her, I wanted her to win, my heart broke for her, and I really cared about what happened to her next. She was the only one who seemed to have a full life going on outside of when she’s interacting with one of the leads, and she carried that life and emotion with her when she was interacting with the leads.

I really liked how we weren’t sure of Cecelia’s relationship to Jamie for the first half of the film. If you thought she was Jamie’s ex, it might make you more skeptical toward Anna. If she’s a friend that’s pining after him, then you start to pit her and Anna against one another. Once they revealed that Cecelia was Jamie’s brother’s girlfriend, it made me want to go back and watch her scenes again. Gilbert crushed it. She gave every nuance in every scene that worked for both the truth and the misdirect.

Most of My Oxford Year felt awkward, and I couldn’t tell if that was intentional or not. I kept wondering, am I supposed to feel a little out of sorts because Anna does? Or because Jamie does? Or is this bad editing where we’re just unnecessarily lingering on something for too long?

The scene where they meet and he starts crawling around to hide from an ex-fling — is this supposed to be funny? I didn’t laugh. I was more confused by the absurdity and pausing to Google how old Jamie was supposed to be, because what grown man behaves this way? I could see a grown man hiding, maybe behind the counter, maybe running into a back room, maybe going down the street, but to drop to his hands and knees in front of a complete stranger I was just like … what?

This film is beautiful. The set is lovely. Oxford is beautiful. Every montage of the couple exploring Oxford and enjoying food and each other are so cute. I liked that the sex scenes were implied, because that’s all we needed with this story. But none of it felt… necessary. There was a lot of like, Anna likes to read, let’s put them in the library again, but going to the library didn’t move the story along.

If you want something to put on in the background that you can check in and out of without missing any key story points, this is a great option.

I read that they changed the ending from the book — Jamie doesn’t die in the book. Personally, I prefer the filmmakers’ choice. It keeps true to the question posed throughout the film: does it have to last to be worth it? And for Anna, the answer is no. It doesn’t have to last forever to mean something. Their love is still meaningful.

I just wish I’d gotten more invested in Jamie to be sad about it. I don’t want to shrug when the love interest dies!

Overall, My Oxford Year is fine. It’s sweet, but forgettable. I really wanted to love it. It had potential to do so much more.