‘The Life List’ Review: Sofia Carson’s Rote Romantic Drama for Netflix Inspires Jeers, Not Cheers

variety.com:

Courtney Howard With smarter streamlining, “The Life List” could’ve been impactful. As is, the two-hour-plus Netflix original suffers by attempting to blend two predictable storylines into one: a reductive romantic search for The One crammed in alongside a drama about a directionless woman encouraged by her dead mother to rediscover her joie de vivre in order to claim her inheritance.

Not only does its narrative momentum stall all too frequently, but our heroine’s completion quests lack the basics to deliver rousing feelings.

Worse still, it’s frustratingly more concerned with telling us how she’s financially able to afford having a delayed quarter-life identity crisis in New York City than it is with giving her journey toward enlightenment any genuine, satiating sense of internal transformation.

Droll Alex (Sofia Carson) is stuck in her life, only she doesn’t realize it. She bides her free time in an unglamourous city loft apartment with her longterm, layabout boyfriend Finn (Michael Rowland).