The Life List (now streaming on Netflix) is the type of movie you get for free when you send in three proof-of-purchase seals for boxed wine. I know, that sounds like a cheap dig, and I won’t deny that. But it’s true – this is a glossy, gentle dramedy about grief and love and finding one’s purpose that’s a couple of four-letter words away from being a Hallmark flick. Please note: none of this means the movie is bad! It may be just fine based on its own modest parameters! That could ALSO be true! Based on a bestseller by Lori Nelson Spielman, The Life List stars Sofia Carson as a slightly wayward young woman who needs to fulfill the list of life goals she made at age 13 in order to get her mother’s inheritance, and the story is a little deeper than that single-line summation implies. Thankfully.
The Gist: Let’s start by defining “wayward”: Alex (Carson) is dating a guy who works in a record store (I take offense to that; way to alienate me within three minutes here, movie). She lost her job (unfairly) as a teacher and now works for her makeup mogul mom Elizabeth (Connie Britton), which, you know, nepo city. And she tends to gaze longingly out windows and into mirrors as if she’s looking for something. Like what, you may ask? HERSELF, duh! Anyway, these are symptoms indicating that she’s just getting by instead of actually living life. Alex stands around awkwardly at her sister-in-law’s baby shower, everybody side-eyeing Record Store Clerk Guy (hey, he’s also trying to develop and launch a video game, so you can keep your slacker jokes in your pocket, thank you), and she looks at all those side-eyers like they all have their shit together and she doesn’t. But here’s the secret, sister: Nobody has their shit together! We’re all flailing! Sometimes you accomplish something meaningful and sometimes you just get by. And it’s OK! Trust me!
Then, the bomb drops: Catherine wraps her arms around Alex and says, “It’s back.” It’s back, and the treatment ain’t worth it. Two minutes later, the screen dissolves from Catherine and Alex embracing on the bed to Alex alone on the bed in a black dress, ready to walk downstairs for the wake. She and her brothers – Julian (Federico Rodriguez) and his wife Catherine (Rachel Zeiger-Haag), and Lucas (Dario Ladani Sanchez) and his wife Zoe (Marianne Rendon) – gather a the lawyer’s office to read the will, and is it me, or is the junior not-yet-a-partner handling the paperwork, Brad (Kyle Allen), like, super-cute? Yeah. He is. But what he reads is less delicious for Alex, because even though she heads her mom’s marketing department, she doesn’t inherit control of the company as expected. In fact, she’s essentially fired, and forced to complete The Life List, a list of goals Alex made when she was 13, and has yet to achieve. She has a year. Then she’ll get her inheritance, which is a secret until there’s a checkmark next to all the things.
But wait. There has to be some cutesy gimmick layered into the regular gimmick, right? That’s a bingo: Every time Alex completes one of the goals, Brad gives her a DVD video Elizabeth made espousing wisdom and knowledge from BEYOND the GRAVE. (Note, more screen time for Connie Britton is never a bad thing.) What’s on the list, then? Silly stuff like “get a tattoo” or “lose yer freakin’ mind in a mosh pit,” but also nigh-impossible stuff like “be a great teacher,” “make up with Dad” and “find true love.” And the first order of business is to drop Record Store Guy (Michael Rowland) so he can yell desperately out the window as she’s moving out in his Lloyd Dobl- wait, no, Rob Gordon, it’s definitely his Rob Gordon moment. Then she sets up in Elizabeth’s house and gets to work. Brad is a sweet dude who helps her and endears himself to her, and she also meets and starts dating sophisticated hunk Garrett (Sebastian De Souza), and if you’re sensing a third-act whoozitgonnabe, well, you’re on the right track. And so Alex reads Moby Dick and finds a teaching gig and takes piano lessons and meets up with her dad (Jose Zuniga) and learns some family secrets, etc., etc., hopefully becoming far less wayward as she goes, just as her dear sweet saintly mother planned.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Life List is like Eat Pray Love if the eater/prayer/lover never leaves New York City.
Performance Worth Watching: Connie Britton: true professional. Can make corny stuff palatable with ease.
Memorable Dialogue: “I didn’t even know there were record stores anymore!” – some charlatan of an ancillary character
Sex and Skin: Sorry, there’s nothing hotter here than a little horizontal smooching.
Our Take: Can someone make the list a bit shorter, please? Lop off a coupla bullet points? The Life List absolutely doesn’t need to push past the two-hour mark, because it doesn’t have anything to say that can’t be summed up within the confines of a sign you’d see in the home-decor aisle at Hobby Lobby, like I sure do like coffee or if you sprinkle when you tinkle be a sweetie and wipe the seatie. It’s dangerously close to being Live Laugh Love: The Movie. But I was grateful that the characters here are easy to hang out with, like a nice neutral-beige wallpaper or a print of a pastoral scene by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light.
I go hard at this movie because it’s cutesy, tends to be simplistic in its life lessons, and might’ve been written by the karmic hand of the Late Character Played By Connie Britton, considering how Alex’s success hinges on contrivance and coincidence. But The Life List might erode your defenses, as it did mine, at least enough to make it palatable; it’s inoffensive without being offensively inoffensive, and features many nicely executed comedio-dramatic moments from its large supporting cast.
The ever-endearing former Disney Channel staple Carson is capable of bearing the load of its light comedy and middleweight drama, even when the character written for her is about a quarter-shade shy of being a recognizable three-dimensional human being. Crucially, the film tips more toward the drama portion of dramedy via Alex’s assertion of her goals — she isn’t jumping through hoops just for material rewards, but because she understands the wisdom her mother espouses. Carson’s easygoing chemistry with Allen just might win you over, and she churns up some relatable emotions that feel more like tangible expressions of fear, sadness and self-doubt than overwrought means of manipulating our tear ducts. When it comes down to it, this is a movie about working through grief by working on yourself, a sentiment that ultimately grows a hair too big for a Hobby Lobby plaque. That’s a good thing.
Our Call: Despite its packaging, boxed wine isn’t always undrinkable swill. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.