Perhaps the most interesting fact about Adam Brooks’s Netflix release “The Life List” (2025) is that it was based on a novel. That novel—Lori Nelson Spielman’s 2013 bestseller—was translated into 27 languages across 30 countries, a level of international success that makes the film’s lifeless adaptation even more baffling. A minor character in the movie quips, “There are facts, and then there’s what’s true,” but the truth here is that this narrative is so superficial and weirdly tedious that it never makes for compelling viewing.
The film opens with Alex, the privileged daughter of a wealthy woman dying of cancer, who abandons her passion to take up a role in her mother’s company. After her mother’s death, Alex is stunned to learn that she has been fired and temporarily cut off from her inheritance. The catch? She can only claim what’s hers once she completes a teenage bucket list she had long forgotten in the attic. With each accomplishment, she receives a DVD message from her late mother, who offers life lessons and, of course, an endless supply of sentimental reassurances of love. The final item on the list is the holy grail of rom-com treasure hunts: finding true love.
The resulting journey is a pointless exercise in tedium, featuring arbitrary tasks like reading Moby Dick cover to cover and taking a specific piano lesson. These challenges frustrate both Alex and the audience. It’s as if her mother, now a ghost wielding manipulation, refuses to let go—steering Alex’s life from beyond the grave under the guise of coming-of-age wisdom. Brooks and his Netflix-approved aesthetic of festive gloss are blissfully unaware of the irony. The film is riddled with generic quips and shiny, Hallmark-style Christmas visuals that cater perfectly to the kind of audience that equates consuming with comfort, no matter how uninspired the material.
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Even as Alex gradually warms up to the scavenger hunt her mother has orchestrated, it’s hard to muster any investment. The problem lies in the very fabric of the film’s construction. A perfectly manicured Connie Britton sits bedside, speaking into a camera like a self-help mentor you muted years ago. This gimmick is sprinkled generously across the two-hour runtime, under the mistaken belief that it’s poignant rather than painfully saccharine.
For a film that postures as a character study, “The Life List” is frustratingly shallow. It masquerades as both complex and simple, failing at both. At its core, Alex’s story could have been a psychologically rich drama about a woman suffocating under the weight of her mother’s emotional grip. But instead of meaningful introspection, the film presents her privilege—her immense wealth, familial safety net, and self-absorption—as something she’s owed.
There’s little interiority to her struggles, and Sofia Carson’s performance doesn’t help. She plays Alex with an exhausting perkiness, adhering to the script without adding an ounce of nuance or self-awareness. The film never truly reckons with its protagonist’s entitlement or the broader implications of the premise. It is content with a surface-level exploration of grief, growth, and self-discovery without ever engaging in the messiness of any of these themes.
The only person who seems to be having any fun with this material is Kyle Allen. Now a staple in young-adult cinema, he plays the charming, witty, and effortlessly likable legal consultant with an ease that feels like muscle memory. His ability to switch from businesslike formality to romantic charisma never feels forced, unlike the rest of the film’s half-baked emotional beats. His natural presence does much of the heavy lifting, making the film’s love triangle—later a full-fledged romance—the only aspect that truly works, however flawed it might be. Even when the script limits him, his performance brings a rare spark of life to an otherwise uninspired affair.
By the end, Alex’s mother doesn’t fail to deliver one last grand revelation, ensuring her daughter emerges from this experience enlightened rather than embittered. The film positions this as a touching moment, but in execution, it plays like a budget-friendly, overly sentimental cousin to “Secrets & Lies.” It wants to be profound but only manages to be predictable. Frankly, it would have been infinitely more interesting if that final DVD had ended with a cheeky, “Surprise, bitch! No generational wealth for you.”
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