This article contains major character or plot details.
The Life List finds Alex Rose (Sofia Carson) embarking on a slightly unconventional mission for a grown woman: In order to gain access to a mystery inheritance left by her mom, she has to complete a list of life goals she cooked up in bubbly handwriting when she was a 13-year-old girl.
Let’s back up. When Alex’s mom Elizabeth (Connie Britton), terminally ill with cancer, grows concerned that Alex has settled and given up on her dreams, she sets out to ensure that this won’t continue after she dies. In her will, Elizabeth stipulates that only after Alex has completed her childhood life list can she earn what she’s been bequeathed — and she only has until the new year to do so.
Thus begins Alex’s at times funny, at times painful, quest of checking off the list: teaching young students at a women’s shelter, getting a tattoo, traveling to Vermont to meet her estranged biological father, and performing stand-up comedy at an open mic night. “At some point in our lives, before we were jaded, we all were that little Alex Rose, with our wild hopes and dreams that felt boundless,” Carson tells Tudum. “Somewhere along the way, we forget. And [the film is] such a beautiful and simple reminder to go back in time and remember what it is that we really want out of life. What a beautiful, and powerful, and hopefully life-changing question to ask yourself.”
The Life List, written and directed by Adam Brooks (Definitely, Maybe; Imposters) and produced by Liza Chasin (The Lost City, Stillwater) and 3dot Productions, is based on a book of the same name by Lori Nelson Spielman. “The book was brought to me by a producer over 10 years ago. I loved the central premise and very quickly had a clear idea about how I’d adapt it,” says Brooks.
Although his connection to the material was immediate, the process of actually getting the movie made anything but. “I kept tracking it, and about four years later I found out the book rights had become available. I’d never had this happen, where a movie takes so long to get made, especially one I cared deeply about and never gave up on,” says Brooks. “In a way, it was good for me and for the movie — since I first wrote [a draft of the script], I’d seen my kids going through their own trials in their twenties, and lost both my parents and my younger brother. The themes of the movie had deepened for me”
Every time Alex checks something off the list, she gets another pre-recorded DVD from her mom, connecting her to a person who meant so much, and the list of dreams — big and small — that had fallen by the wayside. “I want you to live your best life,” Elizabeth tells her daughter in the first DVD. “You have to get yourself out of this hole that you’re in. I’m not going to be around to dig you out, but I can sure as hell leave you a shovel.”
Helping Alex complete this yearlong mission are her two brothers (Dario Ladani Sanchez, Federico Rodriguez) and their wives (Marianne Rendón, Rachel Zeiger-Haag), dashing co-worker turned love interest Garrett (Sebastian de Souza), and family lawyer Brad (Kyle Allen), who turns out to be more than just the keeper of the DVDs.
So does Alex achieve all that her teenage self dreamed of? Read on to find out whether our lost protagonist finds her way.
Does Alex complete her life list?
Although at first she thinks one entry has eluded her — falling in love — by the end of the movie, Alex has indeed made it through the list.
The Life List’s titular motif upends the rom-dram makeover trope. Alex may have lost sight of who she wants to be, but this is only too relatable — who among us hasn’t fallen prey to the inertia of our day-to-day lives? “I feel like the movie works because everyone is oh-so human,” says Brooks. “As her mom, I was seeing that she’s doing fine, but I know what she has the potential to be,” Britton tells Tudum. “I also know the traumas that she’s been through, the setbacks that have held her back. So I liked the complexity of that — that it wasn’t just that she’s a disaster and we have to get her fixed up by New Year’s. It helped to understand that I was speaking to something that I recognize in her that maybe nobody else could see like her mother [could].”
Although Alex and Elizabeth’s onscreen chemistry would make it seem otherwise, the two actors met the morning of their only shared scene. “Connie and Sofia found their rhythm quickly and naturally. It was moving to see it happen, the intimacy of it,” says Brooks. “Somehow they instantly created that bond between mother and daughter.”
When it comes to Elizabeth’s offbeat solution to her maternal instinct, Britton tells Tudum that completing entries on the list is only part of the work that transforms Alex over the course of The Life List: “We’re not just whittling [these big questions and doubts] down to checking off a box. We’re actually letting these guidelines wake us up to what’s important in life. And that’s what you walk away with — that everybody is more complex than that.” Brooks adds, “If you really go deep in the specificity of your characters and your story, then you can reach any number of people in a real way.”
Was that really Patrick Ewing?
One entry on Alex’s life list may not be as relatable to viewers: As part of her quest, Alex plays basketball with real-life New York Knick and Olympic Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing. “I am the clumsiest person when it comes to sports, but I trained for this,” Carson says. “Patrick Ewing was the sweetest, gentlest giant. I had my jersey on. Adam had his hat on. It took me a couple of tries to make it in the basket, and the moment I got it in, it was so joyous. I could’ve cried of happiness.”
Where Was The Life List shot?
The Life List was shot on location in New York City, which was very important to Brooks. “I’ve spent most of my adult life in New York, and as a child, I came here all the time. My father was from Brooklyn. He grew up a mile from where the Rose House is in Ditmas Park,” says Brooks of his sentimental ties to the movie’s backdrop.
Beyond his personal reasons, Brooks felt the location’s authenticity was of the utmost importance: “I think that part of the charm and the strength of movies like this is making the locations feel viable and real. I try to feel like people are in the right apartment, the right office, the right space because I think it creates a world around them that deepens the story, but also creates a romance because New York is New York.”
This approach helped Carson embody her character, and referenced a long legacy of rom-coms set in New York City. “Adam and Liza both are New Yorkers, and Adam shot an iconic film, Definitely, Maybe, in New York many years ago and it’s become one of the most iconic rom-coms,” says Carson. “He wanted The Life List to be an ode to New York, but to the real New York. The New York that Alex would’ve lived in.”
Brooks took a maybe unexpected approach to signaling the movie’s location and bringing New York City to life realistically, opting for more generic, lived-in scenery, as opposed to the sights we’ve all become familiar with in the New York canon. “I wanted to make sure there were no postcard shots,” he says. “For instance, there’s a scene where Alex is walking with her sister-in-law along the Brooklyn Promenade, and as they’re walking, the camera follows them. They come around a corner and the glistening city skyline reveals itself in the background as they’re talking. I wanted the city to reveal itself the way it does when you live here and you’re not paying close attention until inevitably you stumble upon a corner or a park or a building that reminds you of the power and beauty of the city. We capture the romance of New York, but in a way that feels like the city truly belongs to the characters.”
Does Alex reconnect with her biological father in The Life List?
Flanked by lawyer Brad and his girlfriend Nina (Maria Jung), Alex travels to Vermont to seek out her biological father, a mysterious musician (Jordi Mollà). When they eventually talk, he admits he’d written a song about her, but their connection is short-lived — he stands her up for breakfast the following morning. Alex returns home and reconnects with the man who raised her (José Zúñiga), from whom she has felt distant since her parents’ divorce.
Their trip up north is not for naught, however …
Who does Alex end up with in The Life List?
Alex’s first romantic interest is Finn (Michael Rowland), a “life guy who learns by living” who has a thimble’s worth of sensitivity and an affinity for zombie video games. He’s followed by Garrett, a co-worker at the shelter where she’s a substitute teacher. Although he’s smart, confident, and pushes Alex, he too lacks what she needs.
It’s not until the trip to New England that Alex realizes how special her rapport with Brad is. Slowly, Alex comes to realize that Brad passes the true love test — concocted by her mom and relayed to her by her sister-in-law and best friend — with flying colors. Is he kind? Can I tell him everything in my heart? Does he help me become the best version of myself? Can you imagine him as the father of your children?
Brooks came up with this concept, noting how it has resonated off-screen as well. “People have responded incredibly strongly to that,” the writer-director says. “These are meaningful questions, especially for people of Alex’s age — she’s almost 30 and urgently feels the need to define who she will be — in relation to love and work and family.” Even Britton was impressed by her own character’s questions, “I was sitting there in the movies watching it, and was like, ‘These are really good.’”
By the end of the movie, their pull is impossible to deny and they come crashing into each other — literally. Although born-and-bred New Yorker Alex finally earns her driver’s license thanks to her life list, her driving skills are less than adroit, and when she pilots her mom’s car to Brad’s house in a grand romantic gesture, a few fenders are damaged in the process. “The scene where Alex crashes the car, I love just being with those characters and having that gratifying moment between them, that coming togetherness of them,” says Allen. “After following these characters for so long, to have that moment where everything comes together and clicks, it’s very settling, like, ‘Phew, I needed that.’”
What song did Alex and Brad dance to during their trip to Vermont?
They first crank up the volume of The Ting Tings’ “That’s Not My Name” during a rowdy car karaoke session, and when the song comes on later when they’re a few beers deep at a juke bar, Alex and Brad soon realize how important the other has become in their lives.
“That’s Not My Name” was Allen and Carson’s theme song long before their characters fell in love to it. The two actors boogied to the high-energy tune during Allen’s audition. “It was so fun to watch them dance to that Ting Tings song at the audition — instant chemistry, instant connection,” says producer Chasin. “We knew we had found our guy.”
You wouldn’t guess it from their chaotic moves, but coincidentally, both Carson and Allen are trained dancers: “It was really fun to dance like Alex and Brad in a completely uninhibited, free, and kooky way,” Carson tells Tudum. “I love that scene, and that was such a beautiful memory. I think so many people have had nights like that.
What does Alex inherit in The Life List?
In the last, emotional DVD, Elizabeth grants Alex the inheritance she was promised in exchange for her completed life list: their beloved family home. “This movie talks about life in direct accordance to death, and walks people through in a really beautiful and constructive way that leaves everyone happier and more fulfilled for what’s happened,” Allen tells Tudum. “It’s a movie about growing up and finding love, and it’s also a story about grief and loss,” adds Brooks. “The sadness and confusion that Alex feels ultimately give way to something hopeful and life-affirming. It’s a reminder that when you lose people, they remain alive within you.”
The final scene of the movie takes us back to where the movie started, in the Rose family living room, yet the Alex hosting a bustling New Year’s Eve bash with her friends and family is nearly unrecognizable from the hours-late, bean salad-toting Alex we met at the beginning of the film.
The Life List is now streaming on Netflix.
