I Rewatched Every Sofia Carson Netflix Movie Before ‘My Oxford Year’ Drops This Friday
The Life List was arguably Netflix’s best movie of this year, so far, and after they made protagonist Sofia Carson their official host for Netflix Tudum 2025, I knew I had to keep an eye on her. The streaming giant was betting big, and it was time to do some reading up on their latest star-in-the-making, so I watched all* of her movies ahead of her next major rom-com dropping this Friday (8/1), My Oxford Year.
*Confession: There is one glaring omission to this list—I did not watch My Little Pony: A New Generation. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just couldn’t. I know it’s a black mark on my dedication to journalistic thoroughness, but I hope you can show some empathy anyway.
Feel The Beat (2020)
Carson plays a midwestern girl turned Broadway dancer who goes viral after rubbing a casting director the wrong way, and has to return to her small-town Wisconsin home with her tail between her legs when she runs out of cash. She’s basically a heartless Scrooge who broke up with her high-school boyfriend in a text and decides to use the local dance school she started out in as a means to getting face time with the only Broadway big-wig who might have the balls to cast her despite her persona non-grata status.
She unrealistically terrorizes a group of children with her overbearing and demanding teaching style, but of course they soften her with guilt and all the feminine self-sacrificing expectations of a Hallmark movie. As a midwestern girl myself, who dropped out of dance class in the 90s, preferring a karate gi to a dress that made me look like JonBenét Ramsey, the film’s dance mom vibes completely justified my choice.
Purple Hearts (2022)
Netflix did a little rinsing and repeating with this one—Carson still plays a snarky aspiring artist with dark humor who is strapped for cash, but she’s a diabetic singer without health insurance. Enter the handsome marine who owes a drug dealer some money, and is willing to commit marriage fraud with her, and you have the formula for a cheesy rom-com that is mildly entertaining.
While I don’t mind a farfetched premise, I did text my actual sister, who is a Type 1 diabetic, while watching the film, because I was 99% sure that the scenes where Carson displays symptoms of low blood sugar, and then injects herself with insulin, would kill her in real life. It would appear the majority of the research budget for this film went to covering the military aspects of the plot.
Carry-On (2024)
The smallest role Carson has played for Netflix by far (without having the My Little Pony details at hand), her character was reduced to a pregnant blackmail pawn with a brief action scene to make up for it. This movie was an ill-advised Christmas action-terrorism-thriller that I’m honestly surprised Jason Bateman and Taron Egerton (who had the majority of the screentime) agreed to participate in.
Egerton’s leading man is the reluctant and nervous father-to-be of Carson’s child, and he misreads her genuine support for his happiness and career aspirations as a sign to ask for a promotion as a TSA agent, placing him on a screening machine for the first time on Christmas Eve, where he becomes a target of (and in my opinion an accomplice to) terrorists. I’d rather spend two hours in a non-TSA pre-check security line than watch this movie again.
The Life List (2025)
This film is by far Carson’s best thus far, and captured millennial women everywhere by tugging on our heartstrings with a character who has lost most of her dreams, and then loses her mother (played by Connie Britton). The last will and testament requires her to complete a list of life goals she wrote as a teenager before she can claim her mystery inheritance, and after each accomplishment, she can claim one pre-recorded DVD with a message from her mother from beyond the grave.
It captured the zeitgeist for unmarried thirty-somethings who are coming to terms with an adulthood that is so different from the expectations they, or their parents, had for the future. Is there a little fantasy-wish-fulfillment involved with her getting gifted an entire house at the end of the film? You bet. But this one is still worth the watch for anyone who has wanted the guts to fulfill a childhood dream as an adult.
My Oxford Year (Premiering August 1)
Coming off the extremely positive reception of The Life List, we have high hopes for Carson’s summer rom-com starring alongside Queen Charlotte‘s Corey Mylchreest. She’s pivoting from her starving artist persona to an American academic pursuing her studies across the pond. I’ve already placed my bets on the ending based on the not-so-enigmatic trailer, and two mega-hits in the same year for Carson might take her career to the next level. We’ll just have to wait for Friday to see what happens on both fronts.
