Netflix has become something of a safe space for Jennifer Lopez, a one-time box office heavyweight who has now secured a more reliable at-home following on the platform. Middling action films The Mother and Atlas might have turned critics off but both drew blockbuster streaming numbers, while more recent theatrical efforts such as Marry Me and Kiss of the Spider-Woman struggled to reach earlier highs. The arrival of her latest Netflix vehicle, to-the-point romcom Office Romance, is likely to be another smartly packaged win for the star, harking back to a genre she once dominated in the 2000s with hits like Maid in Manhattan and The Wedding Planner. It’s similarly by-the-numbers, but what gives it something of an alleged unique selling point is its unusual R rating and the promise of more “raunch” than usual.
But the film is far tamer than those involved seem to think, an inconsistent mix of sugar and spice, the right tone never quite clicking into place. Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein, acting as both leading man and co-writer, tries to introduce British humour (awkward bumbling, football jokes, calling people cunt affectionately) into an American setting but it never blends together as smoothly as we want or expect from such high-gloss material. Lopez looks and acts the part, movie star charisma dialled up to 11, but the film around her is too unsure and ungainly to match.
She plays Jackie, the CEO of an airline she inherited from her father; despite nepo baby accusations, she strives to give it her all, to the detriment of her personal life. Her lack of romantic or even sexual entanglements makes a lawsuit alleging that she used her body to ensure the success of a business deal even harder to stomach, and after the company’s top lawyer (Bradley Whitford) chokes on a breakfast burrito (!), she’s forced to rely on his underling Daniel (Goldstein) to represent her.
Daniel, who is already struggling to acclimatise to the environment of an American workplace, finds himself falling for her despite a strict company rule that forbids employees from dating. In a scene that sums up the film’s odd tone, when the pair first shake hands in her office, he gets a visible erection that she retreats from, understandably horrified, something that’s less amusing or “saucy” as the film’s description suggests than genuinely creepy (it’s not even explained by him accidentally mistaking Viagra for vitamins or whatever the Farrelly brothers might have come up with). Miraculously, she doesn’t instantly fire him, despite a reputation for being a hardass, and they embark on a behind-closed-doors relationship that quickly moves from sexual to something more.
There are jokes about their gap in attractiveness (“like Helen of Troy having sex with Mr Bean”) but it’s not Goldstein’s handsomeness that makes their potentially ruinous attraction hard to buy (he looks like a believable, square-jawed Ben Affleck-adjacent match). The problem is that the rather one-note actor just can’t match her radiant charm or comfortable ease within the genre and his clumsy attempts to try and “ooh, well, ermmm” his way through their scenes fail to endear us (has anyone really managed to do that well since Hugh Grant?). It’s then hard to get onboard with why she would risk everything for him, and so while Goldstein and co-writer Joe Kelly certainly know the beats of the genre (along with sturdy Marigold Hotel and Ticket to Paradise director Ol Parker), they haven’t managed to give them any life, a perfunctory genre exercise deserving of a platform filled with them. When the inevitable Big Declaration finally comes, in the film’s weakest and hardest-to-buy scene, you’ll be hard-pressed to care what the response is.
It’s also one of Netflix’s jarring “just because” comedies littered with out-of-place swearing just because the ratings system provides fewer restrictions in the world of streaming (to be filed alongside foul-mouthed yet otherwise safely squishy comedies Like Father and Set It Up). It’s unnecessary overkill and with the film’s attempts to be naughty largely translating to double entendres and bedsheet-obscured sex, nothing ever explains why this was positioned as something other than a rather standard romcom without, say, the Apatow touch giving it a sharper edge it could have benefited from.
Someone, other than Lopez, who also understands the assignment and makes the absolute best of it is Betty Gilpin, playing the kind of supportive yet sarcastic friend/colleague character that Judy Greer or Kathryn Hahn used to ace. She’s well aware of how thankless this role can often be (she even played a subverted version of it in the amusing Rebel Wilson spoof Isn’t It Romantic) and truly gives it all that she has, every line delivery punching up what she’s been given, delivering the film’s only vaguely funny moments (someone should give her a romantic lead sometime soon).
The romcom is a genre I will forever root for, despite it being stuck in a cruelly long flop era, and while Office Romance does have a tad more gloss than Netflix’s many junkier alternatives, the magic is still missing. Like the office at its centre, it’s too sleek and corporate to melt us – all work and no play.
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Office Romance is out on Netflix on 5 June
