My Oxford Year: Recently released on Netflix, my interest in this movie was not in the romance, but more as a travel vlog into Oxford UK as I was heading out to go there in just over a week from viewing. I wanted to see the quaint university town and the incredible iconic buildings who have had students and professors like Tony Blair, Canadian PM Mark Carney, Bill Clinton, Indira Gandhi, as well as Hugh Grant, Stephen Hawking, CS Lewis, Michael Palin (Monty Python), JRR Tolkien, Oscar Wilde and Sir Thomas More to name but a few. This at first seems like an Oxford version of Emily in Paris with Lily Collins as an American visiting a new place and then finding romance. Many a story has begun with this outline. In this case, Emily is Anna De La Vega from Queens NY with immigrant parents. She is played by Sofia Carson. She meets up with Jamie Davenport, played by Corey Mylchreest, a handsome new professor who just happens to be filling and teaching Anna. Of course they don’t meet with the best of circumstances. Anna does have her life planned out well, having deferred a Wall Street job at Goldman Sachs for a year in Oxford.
There are quirky roommates and family who are about. For Jamie, his parents are played by well-known 80s personalities Catherine McCormack (Braveheart) and Dougray Scott (from Ever After as the prince or MI 2). Jamie has some challenges with his father as well as some women on campus. He also seems to have a female companion often times. So his story is a little murky and too complicated for Anna’s taste. Things happen. Then the story turns a little darker with a few unexpected turns. The tension with the father for Jamie is revealed and we have a better understanding of Jamie’s situation and his past. Of course this is a story that isn’t new, and there are times when it feels very forced and manipulative. Likely it’s not trying to be, and the performances are as you would expect. For me, one of my early gripes is that no one at the University seems to have any issue with a professor and a student having a romantic relationship. One would think that there are rules about such things, and likely someone might complain about the conflict of interest at least in that class, as well as the power dynamic. But nevermind, as no one else in the film seems to care. This film is meant to illicit an emotional response and does. Life is about choices. There are plenty of poetic quips and memes that can speak to life being a series of small moments. There are other adages like “no one is promised another day” and “none of us know how much time we have together” as a romantic couple. The movie City of Angels with Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage explored that concept fully in 1998, released close to Braveheart (1995) and Ever After (1998). This is worth a viewing if you want to see Oxford in drone footage and on the campus, or if you feel like seeing pretty people fall for one another.
Mondays With Robbie 