7 Unintentionally Hilarious Things About ‘My Oxford Year’

On the surface, My Oxford Year is straightforward Sparks Lite, a glossy rom-dram with a dash of schmaltz and a heaping of corny one-liners.

It’s what you put on in the background as you calculate your mortgage or groom your Labubu. It’s what you put on after you’ve taken a Melatonin and have no intention of staying awake for 20 minutes, even if it causes Netflix to recommend The Last Song to you until you die. It’s what you watch in a hospital when you’re so high on Vicodin that you’re now hallucinating and think that Sofia Carson is Octomom.

But it’s also good for a few laughs. Here are seven reasons why My Oxford Year is unintentionally hilarious.

1. Mach 10 meet cute

With a movie like this, you’re already expecting that a romantic cliché will kick off the narrative. It’s part of the charm of these movies. But in My Oxford Year, the enemies-to-lovers storyline plays out at light speed. In one scene, Anna hates Jamie. In the next, she’s ready to bone. There’s barely any whimsical misunderstanding or achingly tense confrontation before this principled woman suddenly sheds her established personality and gets down with the assistant professor of her English class. It’s like if a Jane Austen novel skipped all 300 of the pages in the middle.

2. Do the writers of this movie know what London is?

Kissing in the rain? Old buildings? Dusty first editions of books? When did those become awe-inspiring emblems of the United Kingdom? You can find all that in Milwaukee. This movie glorifies London to near-cringe extent, magically erasing its unhoused people, pickpocketers, psychopathic drivers, and ever-present smell of horse poop. Westminster Abbey is cool, but at the cost of your soul. 

3. Anna is from Queens but doesn’t recognize a shawarma stand

The Internet has already mercilessly mocked this oversight, but it bears repeating. A Queens resident not recognizing shawarma is like Ariana Grande not recognizing her own ponytail. 

4. The emotional void behind Sofia Carson’s eyes

Has anyone ever met Sofia Carson? Like, can we confirm that she’s not a creation of AI? Because this woman cannot express human emotions other than “blissfully happy” and “suggesting internal trauma, but sexy.” Social media is awash with complaints about her “Hallmark Channel line readings” and apparent need to look hot at all times. As one commenter put it, “Girl delivers every line like it’s a Vogue cover shoot and natural acting called in sick.”

5. No one cares that this guest professor is porking his student

In real-life Oxford, sleeping with a student would be a fireable offense. And yet, Jamie cavorts with Anna around London and even on campus, making no efforts to look less attractive while doing so. No one even bats an eye as these two canoodle on university benches, sticking their Oxford commas down each other’s throats. All the film is missing is a scene in which the school’s dean walks by their bench and gives Anna a high five. 

6. The most attractive representation of dying in cinematic history

As someone who has watched every episode of the first ten seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, I am an expert on how to look like you’re dying. It involves artificial wrinkles, dewy moisturizer, undereye bags, and a generous heaping of light grey highlights. But in My Oxford Year, Jamie continues to look like a walking Calvin Klein ad even as he dies of multiple myeloma, a terminal and debilitating blood cancer. He may be suffering from disorientation and multiple organ failure, but praise GQ, he’s still chiseled and glowing!

7. Jamie’s life-changing advice to Anna is to Eat Pray Love

At the beginning of the movie, Anna wants a six-figure salary at Goldman Sachs. By the end, thanks to the revolutionary life lessons she received from Jamie, she visits Venice. Venice! Can you imagine? This absolutely floored me. Never in my life has anyone told me to visit Venice. I mean…Wow. It never even occurred to me that 14th century Gothic architecture, gondolas, or homoerotic French art treasures could actually be good things. I mean, thankfully Jamie told her that, because otherwise Anna might have gone to Kosovo instead!