Of all the movies that came out this summer, by far the most anticipated one by much of the literary and rom-com communities was My Oxford Year. It was also by far the most disappointing release of the summer. With flat acting, poor scripting and an ending that sent shockwaves through those who read the original book, the film was an all around let-down.
What started out as an excited fling between a new student attending Oxford (after finishing at Cornell of all places) and her “tutor” slowly turned into a poorly written story of love and loss; one which seemed to try and be the next Me Before You and greatly failed.
The central message of the film centers around the question asked of our main character, Anna de La Vega (Sofia Carson), “Do you think things are only meaningful if they last forever?” by her main love interest, Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest). As a whole, this could have been the basis for a beautiful film had it not been for poor script writing and line delivery. The film seemed to constantly need to remind us of the lesson being taught — not showing but telling. This is a very flat story-telling method that doesn’t hit as hard to home as with movies in Me Before You where we merely see the unfolding of the story and understand that the temporary events and meetings of our lives can in fact impact us forever. The fact that (spoiler!) Jamie dies in the end instead of surviving his disease, like he did in the book, makes it seem as though the writers wanted to create the next tear-jerking tragedy mimicking Me Before You. They failed in that we were never attached to Jamie, we never found him relatable as his own person. He was just half of a very poorly-written fling that the writers tried to pose as a true romantic love story. The line writing and character development also fell way short of expectations.
As for the characters, the comedic sidekicks of Maggie and Charlie made up the most entertaining part of the movie. They gave not just comedic relief but they seemed to have much more realistic and fun stories to follow. The romance of the two main characters just fell short. It felt like two attractive and smart people who just happened to end up in the same place and… “oh wow, one is dying and doesn’t want to tell the other.” Where do we get an understanding as to why they fell in love other than they just found each other attractive? It felt like a fun fling that the writers failed to turn into something more. As an audience we never got very attached to these characters because they did not give us much to see in terms of them falling in love or who they were as individuals. So what Jamie died? We never even got attached to him in the first place.
On the part of the screenwriters, they fail to make it feel as though the characters are even at Oxford. What was the point of shooting a film on such an iconic campus and barely showing anything of it? The movie may as well have been filmed in Ithaca, with shoots between old dorms and Cornell archives. It did not feel like Oxford, nor did it capture the legacy of the school. That cost the movie the impact of its location and just made it into any other college romance film.
Sofia Carson, who plays our main heroine, delivered a terribly flat performance. Given lines that on their own were eye-roll worthy, her delivery of them made it even worse. In general, it seemed as though she didn’t quite fit the role. Sophia Carson, who has long been known for her roles in other romantic movies such as Purple Hearts and The Life List, underdelivered in her role of Anna de La Vega. Her character came off very one-sided, unrelatable and unalive — a puppet of the role it could have been. Carson’s way of speaking and of carrying herself barely changed throughout the movie. She seemed to be the same person at the end as at the beginning. But the lines had changed. She went from saying how she wants to work at Goldman Sachs and then she falls in love with Jamie. Then, suddenly, with no other character development she wants to teach at Oxford (and is somehow allowed to?). Not only was her line delivery at the end fully unbelievable and carried very little weight, there was no character growth that led up to her wanting to give up on her dreams of working in the US. It was almost like a jump-scare of sorts to see her throw away the life she wanted and take on a new role out of nowhere.
Her love interest Jamie, played by Corey Mylchreest of Bridgerton fame, was the superior of the two in terms of his acting. Yet, he too gave a very dry delivery of his lines. He was more believable, but he also just felt like he was playing a teenage rom-com character and lacked the tangential maturity in his character, considering he should be in his mid-twenties. He made the best of a poorly written script, but even then underdelivered.
In the end though, there was no saving the film. The trailer created great expectations for many and the complete version simply did not live up to them. It was the biggest disappointment in the whole of Oxford’s nearly 1,000 year history.
Lusine Boyadzhyan is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at lboyadzhyan@cornellsun.com.
