I started to watch My Oxford Year within about ten minutes of finishing writing my review of the same named novel from which it was adapted. The review, I started perhaps thirty minutes prior to that. I wanted all scenes and details as fresh in my mind as possible for the watching so that I could, to my mind, best gauge the adaptation. I was particularly excited to watch Corey Mylchreest, who I absolutely adored as our dear Farmer George in the Bridgerton prequel (spinoff?) Queen Charlotte.
It was interesting to see what changed in the adaptation: some names were changed (while others were kept the same), some scenes were written out altogether, and the major storyline of Ella (now Anna) and her work in the political sphere was changed to a simple finance research analyst position at Goldman Sachs. Not to mention her father, who was dead in the book, was alive and well in the movie. I know you are never going to get an exact adaptation, but it was wild to see how much changed. However, it was easy to understand.
When adapting a book for the screen you must consider the length of time that will be dedicated to each storyline. The storyline about her dad and all the conversations that resulted from it in the book would have added at least a half hour to the film, while the political stuff could have been an entirely new movie on its own. In order to keep the meat of the story, you must cut off some gristle.
Anyway, I never expected a perfect adaptation. We can’t expect The Lord of the Rings in every adaptation we watch. But it was interesting to see what changed for the sake of changing, like Ella becoming Anna and Oliver becoming Eddie. I imagine they changed Anna’s name to go with her new last name which went with her new ethnicity (a change I wholeheartedly support, by the way). Anna sounds better with de la Vega than Eleanor does. But I digress. I’m just curious as to why Oliver became Eddie when he is a character that is never seen on screen and is only referred to. That was strange to me.
In some ways I preferred the film to the book. It was simpler with extra storyline eradicated, the fringe characters like Maggie, Charlie, and Tom felt more fleshed out. And Corey did such an excellent job as Jamie. I really did love him in it (I’m probably biased…sue me). But Sofia felt a little awkward in her role and it really took me out of watching the movie a few times. Her performance felt wooden and misplaced, like she was trying for an Oscar-worthy performance but forgot her lines halfway through and began to rely solely on pronouncing her words very clearly and with an affectation I couldn’t quite place.
Her performance really took me out of watching the movie to the point where I would have to pause and rewind to watch a scene over again to see what else was going on. She just, ironically, didn’t come off as a 25-year-old girl making her way through Oxford. She felt like a 35-year-old, like me, pretending to be 25 and hoping not to get caught. Everyone else felt authentic except for Sofia as Anna. All in all, it’s safe to say that Corey carried the movie on his adorable shoulders with a lot of help from the fringe characters.
I think the thing I was most disappointed in film-wise by how unaffected I was by Jamie’s death. I think it was because of the confusing way the film was concluded. In the book, Jamie does not die by the epilogue, he is in a sort of remission and travelling with Ella. But in the film, they are first pictured as travelling together before it is revealed he has actually died and that she is alone on her travels. The bait-and-switch didn’t give me time to react any before the final scene of Anna as a professor and I was not able to feel anything because I was still trying to work out whether or not he was dead.
I probably will not watch the movie again, but it was a cute little distraction from school. If you like the book, give it a shot. You never know, you may like it way more than I did.
Cheers!
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