Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Office Romance’ on Netflix, a Tiresome and Predictable Jennifer Lopez/Brett Goldstein Romantic Comedy

By John Serba

At this point, we’re just hoping the cavalcade of Netflix movies with generic titles, e.g. Office Romance, at least transcend the crushing blandness of those titles. It’s like setting expectations extra-extra-low and expecting us to applaud when the movie hovers a quarter-inch above the bottom of the barrel. ’Twas a time when a Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy in which she plays an airline CEO who falls for her corporate lawyer – played by Brett Goldstein, who also gets a writing credit – would be called Love is in the Air or Terminal Hearts or Let’s Put the Lay in Layover or something, but no, those titles sorta imply things, and Netflix doesn’t sorta imply things, it states them outright so there’s absolutely no question that J-Lo has made the baker’s-dozenth rom-com of her career. Deep sighs all around, then!

OFFICE ROMANCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: We open with a shot of Jackie Cruz (Lopez) arriving for a dinner date, and Daniel Blanchflower (Goldstein) doing the same – but insert record-scratch FZWOOP sound here they’re not meeting each other. No, really – there’s an actual FZWOOP in this movie. I could do with no more FZWOOPs in movies. Ever. Ever! No no no no no! Time to be done! Done done done done done! Bad rom-com! Bad bad bad!

The Gist: Anyway, we jump between dueling dud dates in which Jackie cringes through her unbeau’s inability to get over his ex-wife and Daniel watches his date drink herself into oblivion and cause a big embarrassing scene. Double woof! Unlucky in love times two! Good thing these insanely attractive people are in the same movie, or else they might NEVER be happy!

So, yes, kismet exists in this reality, and it puts both of them in the corporate HQ of AirCruz. Jackie’s the CEO of the airline she founded with her father, Jack (Edward James Olmos, reuniting with Lopez for the first time since Selena). Daniel is the newly hired attorney on the legal team. When her yoozh lawyer Peter Vance (Bradley Whitford) chokes on a breakfast burrito and is hospitalized, Daniel agrees to handle a lawsuit against her filed by a rival airline accusing her of sleeping her way into acquiring new terminals at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. In reality, Jackie hasn’t slept with anyone in, like, 40 decades, something her megapreggo alpha-secretary Sydney (Betty Gilpin) is quick to remind her. And what happens when Jackie and Daniel’s eyes meet? Sparks fly, metaphorically. Oh, and he gets a boner, literally. You could see it from Tau Ceti. How awkward. 

Of course, AirCruz has a very strict, zero-tolerance do-not-violate-under-threat-of-slow-death-by-brain-eating-amoeba policy about office romances. And also of course, that gets tested when Jackie and Daniel have to handle a legal thing in the Dominican Republic — she pilots them in a little prop plane so it’s extra cute — where that boner is destined by the priapism deities to get a workout. And also also of course, such shenanigans make things awkward at work and a powder keg for the aforementioned lawsuit, so also also also of course they have to sneak around, at least until everything blows up, which also also also also of course must happen lest Misunderstandia, the Greek god of rom-coms, be enraged. Probably should’ve just titled this movie Of Course. 

Photo: Ana Carballosa/Netflix

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Well, I wanted to punch that The Graduate homage right in the face. Otherwise, Sandra Bullock previously cornered the market in workplace rom-coms with The Proposal and Two Weeks Notice, and Laws of Attraction covers the lawyer part of the concept. Oh, and one bit is pretty much right out of The Miracle of Life, which scarred my entire seventh-grade class.

Performance Worth Watching: Gilpin brings some welcome eccentricity to the Wacky Supporting Character In A Rom-Com role. She and Tony Hale as the HR guy get a couple decent laughs each.

Sex And Skin: A couple instances of naked characters holding their hands over their junk. Oh, and as I previously implied, a wholly unnecessary, graphic and rather desperate-for-a-laugh birth scene.

Photo: Ana Carballosa/Netflix

Our Take: One needn’t ruin all the “fun” by pointing out that the primary conflict in Office Romance might be avoided if Daniel were to expend the 30 seconds it would take to get another job — classic idiot-plot stuff that we’re all supposed to just roll with because this is a lightweight escapist bit of puffery. I’d counter by saying something like hey maybe write a better screenplay that doesn’t build its narrative cornerstone atop the quicksand of illogic, and happily be labeled a killjoy. A killjoy who enjoyed a smattering of funny bits in the first act but grew increasingly annoyed by the movie’s dogged insistence upon indulging the moldiest of rom-com formulae. 

And so we get meet-cutes, grossout gags (let it be known that the film is very R-rated), goofy side characters, flaccid stabs at comedy (boner and non-boner variety), a break-up-and-make-up arc, a big public confession of love at the end, all the worn-out junk we’ve gamely endured for eons. The soundtrack is full of rancid old chestnuts like “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “You Sexy Thing,” because that’s probably the Spotify playlist AI urped up for the clearly uninspired filmmakers (although a Caribbean’d-up version of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” is rather nice, a lovely flourish in an otherwise forgettable romantic moment). The plot tosses in perfunctory drivel about Jackie’s relationship with her father and Daniel’s incarcerated sister and calls it character development. It’s not a matter of if Office Romance is predictable, but how it’s predictable, and how predictably predictable it is, which is very predictable. 

Lopez was the queen of the 21st-century rom-com, and it makes sense that she might lead the renaissance of a subgenre that’s sagged into irrelevance in the streaming era. Alas, I say. Alas. Less hacky material would do her well; is she not tired of executing the same old tropes? We’re not expecting Netflix to bust genre barriers (although it kinda did with 2019’s excellent Always Be My Maybe), but a plot variation here and a bit of well-considered comedy there would’ve done wonders for Office Romance, a movie that some may find comforting in its lack of surprises, but could’ve been more memorable and played to the chemistry of its leads, with even a modicum of creative rigor. 

Our Call: This is the Spirit Airlines of rom-coms. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.