High On Films’s review published on Letterboxd:
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 ion 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.