This post contains major spoilers for "My Oxford Year."
Netflix might be responsible for one of the best limited series of the year in "Adolescence," but that doesn't mean the streamer has forgotten how to churn out the easily binge-able melodramas that helped it win the streaming wars. "My Oxford Year" is the latest Netflix romance film and it's, well, nonsense really. But it's sort of fun nonsense in that it makes no attempt whatsoever to apologize for its young adult modern-day fairy tale naiveté.
The film stars Sofia Carson, who played Nora Parisi in Netflix's "Carry-On" and has been making a name for herself as an aspiring queen of Netflix romantic dramas, beginning with 2022's "Purple Hearts" and continuing on to the romantic comedy "The Life List" (which dominated Netflix's top charts in 2025). Now, she's returned for more romance with "My Oxford Year," a BookTok fantasy come to life in which she plays Anna De La Vega, an American student who spends a year studying Victorian poetry at the University of Oxford. Once there, she almost immediately falls for English DPhil student and tutor Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest), who charms Anna with his love of poetry and willingness to sing Coldplay really badly.
After the pair get off to a bad start when Jamie splashes Anna by driving through a nearby puddle with his car, it doesn't take long for the latter to fall for the former's British charm. And while most of that comes about due to their shared love of Victorian literature, it's helped greatly by Jamie's awful rendition of Colplay's "Yellow" at a karaoke night. Jamie's dorky side immediately causes Anna to swoon, and the rest of the film sees them embark on a passionate love affair that turns a bit maudlin when Jamie, er, dies. Yes, things take a turn as the movie goes on, but for the first half at least, it's just good old fashioned romantic cheese, and the karaoke scene is one of the best examples.
The whole scene is one extended romance movie cliché wherein the heartthrob makes a fool of himself, thereby revealing an endearing dorkiness that quickly causes his admirer to drop her guard. You've seen it a thousand times before, from "500 Days of Summer" to "P.S. I Love You," and in "My Oxford Year" there's no attempt to subvert any of the standard tropes. It's just plain silly but sort of fun in a cringe-inducing way. Poor Mylchreest had to do it multiple times, too, which means there are not only alternate takes but also multiple versions of the scene with a completely different song.
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The Karaoke Scene In My Oxford Year Almost Featured A George Michael Hit
Corey Mylchreest spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about "My Oxford Year" and his experience filming the Netflix romance. The actor, who previously played King George in "Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story," also provided some insight into the Karaoke scene, which he apparently found just as difficult to watch as the rest of us did. He admitted to the outlet it's "a very painful one for me to watch" and that he attended a cast and crew screening with a hat on just so he could pull it down and block his ears during that scene. "God it was so bad," he added. If it's difficult to watch, it must have been even tougher to shoot, then, especially since Mylchreest had to film multiple takes.
Indeed, in the same interview, the actor also revealed that he shot the karaoke scene with two different songs. Asked if he had a say in what the song might be for this scene, Mylchreest replied, "I was up for anything, but [the song] was decided beforehand," before adding, "We actually filmed two versions of that. We filmed it with 'Yellow' and we also filmed it with 'Careless Whisper' because we didn't know what we would get the rights to." According to the actor, he also had to shoot two versions with each song — one take where Jamie was "trying to do it sort of sincerely, then failing, then going to joke" and another where he's "taken out the whole thing from the beginning."
Despite his aversion to watching the finished scene, Mylchreest did concede that director Iain Morris had chosen the right song with "Yellow" rather than George Michael's 1984 hit. "I understand why they chose that," he admitted, "because also at that point Jamie — not that there is an upper hand — but has had the upper hand over Anna. He splashed her [...] there is a bit of a power dynamic. I think it was important that in that moment, she gets the upper hand on him, and he doesn't take charge of it." "Yellow" does have that falsetto part, which makes for an important beat where Jamie goes from singing sort of okay to just screeching, and it's this that finally causes Sofia Carson's Anna to crack up. In that sense, Morris did make the right choice, although whether that was simply down to the fact he couldn't get the rights to "Careless Whisper" remains unclear.
"My Oxford Year" is now streaming on Netflix.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
