No. Absolutely not. Iain Morris’ My Oxford Year (2025) is not only a disgrace to the romantic comedy genre but also to any portrayals of academia on screen. The same movie that was rumored to “bring back the romcom era”  is a giant, cheap fail.

Anna De La Vega (Sofia Carson), a Cornell University alumna, goes to Oxford for a one-year Victorian Poetry course – only to find that the professor whose course she was hoping to take had smoothly given her teaching privileges to her DPhil student Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest). Not surprisingly, this is the same person Anna already had her first “conflicting” encounter with in town – one that (obviously) was going to lead to a professor-student fling. SHOCK! This, on top of MASSIVE loopholes in the script, all possible cliches on this trope, as well as “the nerdy girl turns bad” and “clueless American” ones – narrated worse than any Wattpad novel, turns this film into a cheesy mess. Should I even mention the illogical plot twists and parallel plot lines (don’t want to spoil it, in case you still want to watch the film that “brought romcoms back”) of terminal illnesses (cause what else can prevent two people in love from being with each other or taking romance seriously, right?), and conflicts that are OBVIOUSLY put in there to keep the story going, to make sense of everything that just DOESN’T WORK! I LOVE ROM-COMS: BUT THIS IS NOT A ROM-COM! I don’t know what this is!

I haven’t read Julia Wheran’s novel, which the movie is inspired by – perhaps the novel is better, I don’t want to judge it. But the film just doesn’t do it for me. And, perhaps, for ANYONE who understands film. Please tell me – which part of this was supposed to be “comedy” – the exaggerated and theatrical acting? Or the mockery of real love, showing the shallowness of “situashionships” people agree to nowadays? And, Oxford? I’m sorry what’s the point of setting this film in the University of Oxford if academia is fully in the background. The poetry student gets sad and reads Sylvia Plath – ANOTHER SHOCK. And any reading or “intellectual conversation” lines and scenes in the film – SO ABSOLUTELY PERFORMATIVE. Sudden conflicts, sudden resolutions, inconsistency in dialogue…Basically, SHALLOW – that’s the word that describes this film.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – films are a reflection of their time. Is this movie telling us we live in a shallow society? Eh. That was a rhetorical question. One way or another, this film is probably not worth your time unless you’re 13, and it probably has too much mature content if you are 13. 

In a word, this is a 2/10 movie that is not worth your time. IT IS IMPORTANT TO KEEP ROMANCE ALIVE ON SCREEN, BUT THIS MOVIE BARELY SCRATCHES THE SURFACE. If you want a really good rom-com, do yourself a favor and go watch a Nora Ephron movie!