Netflix crosses "sappy Lifetime weepy" off its list with The Life List

Once upon a time, Netflix original movies promised to bring the cinematic experience into your home. These days, the streamer is more inclined to deliver movies that feel like a copy of a copy, spanning genres from sci-fi blockbusters to YA fantasies and Hallmark-like Christmas rom-coms. Now Netflix is moving into Lifetime territory with a weepy romantic melodrama based on Lori Nelson Spielman’s 2013 novel, The Life List. Like a lot of Lifetime movies, The Life List starts with a dead mom and ends with a romantic declaration of love. And like a lot of Lifetime movies, its sappy story is served up with the aesthetics of a car insurance commercial that happens to have occasional glimmers of heart.

The mom in question is Connie Britton’s Elizabeth Rose, who leaves behind an unusual last will and testament after she dies from cancer. While her adult sons and their wives get their inheritance right away, her aimless 30-something daughter Alex (Sofia Carson) must pass through a gauntlet to receive hers. Specifically, Alex must spend the next year completing the ambitious “life list” that she wrote for herself when she was 13. Items on the list include goofy one-offs like going all-out in a mosh-pit and performing stand-up at an open mic night, as well as bigger dreams like restarting her teaching career and finding true love.

Each time Alex checks off an item on the list, she gets a pre-recorded DVD message from her mom, who tries to guide her daughter towards reigniting the youthful spark she’s lost as an adult. Alex’s year-long self-discovery journey includes hashing out drama with her dad (José Zúñiga), discovering buried family secrets, and bonding with a troubled student. But, as with many a Lifetime movie (or Netflix movie with an identity crisis), all things eventually come down to a love triangle: Will Alex end up with her dashing British co-worker Garrett (Sebastian de Souza) or the dweeby-hot, just-a-friend lawyer Brad (Kyle Allen), who’s helping her with her mom’s will?

That the plot is fairly predictable isn’t inherently a problem. Writer/director Adam Brooks did great work elevating familiar tropes in his 2008 Ryan Reynolds vehicle Definitely, Maybe, which is quietly one of the best rom-coms of the past 20 years. The trouble is that The Life List too often struggles to reconfigure its well-known tropes into something that feels alive and human, which is what one comes to romantic melodramas for.

That’s at least partially a budget issue. The charm of Definitely, Maybe came the unexpected nuance it found in a glossy studio rom-com package. The Life List was clearly made on a shoestring budget in comparison, which impacts everything from the caliber of the cast to the amount of time spent on shot compositions. What the movie gains by shooting on location in New York City, it loses in a hollow opening act that too often relies on inert master shots where all the actors are crammed into the frame like a play.

At two hours, The Life List is overlong and filled with subplots that may have been meaningful in the novel, but just muddy the waters here. (That includes a women’s shelter that inexplicably has a classroom for high school students, and a romantic rival who quite literally wanders off screen the second she’s no longer needed.) While The Life List gets better as it goes along, it demands a high tolerance for sluggish filmmaking before it gets to the stronger stuff.

Still, despite those considerable hindrances, there’s a reason the Lifetime formula has endured this long. The manipulation may be obvious, but it’s still hard not to get choked up watching Britton deliver wistful, life-affirming maternal advice from beyond the grave. After a slow start, Carson and Allen eventually develop a nice chemistry in the film’s third act. (Allen, in particular, has real rom-com leading man potential.) Even the movie’s corny “Reclaim your one precious life!” message has the potential to resonate with those who aren’t lactose intolerant to cinematic cheese.

All of which makes The Life List not an especially bad movie, but a movie for a very specific audience. Much like a “Live, Laugh, Love” cross-stitch has its place in a certain type of home, The Life List has its place as a cathartic tearjerker for those who care more about life-affirming stories than quality filmmaking. Skeptics not already won over to the romantic melodrama genre, however, should cross this one off the list.