‘Office Romance’ Review: Lopez and Goldstein Star in Functional Netflix Rom-Com
Ol Parker’s latest romantic comedy, Office Romance, is frequently bizarre and, in many respects, painfully unfunny. But once Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein are paired together, it’s pure movie magic.
Reviewing an object like Office Romance can’t be approached in the traditional sense of the term, because it’s not really a movie. Most Netflix originals aren’t. They appear as movies, but don’t offer the same cinematic thrills as the big-screen romantic comedies that filled our movie palaces before streaming services took over the genre. I mean, hell, Jennifer Lopez herself was one of the biggest – and most profitable – rom-com queens before she began pretty much making films only for Netflix. The Wedding Planner. Maid in Manhattan. Shall We Dance? Monster-in-Law. Big films that made big bucks. Ol Parker’s Office Romance won’t be remembered in the same breath as these playful rom coms, because it’s not a movie, but it’s at least distracting enough to make us semi-invested in the core romance at the heart of the picture.
The thing is: this movie is so profoundly stupid that you begin to be invested in its chintzy romance between Airline CEO Jackie Cruz (Jennifer Lopez) and the company’s legal counsel, Daniel Blanchflower (Brett Goldstein), who has been tasked to help with Cruz’s deposition after the company’s previous attorney (played by Bradley Whitford) is hospitalized. The two immediately have feelings for one another. The stern Jackie is impressed by Daniel’s stature, while the latter has a (very) visible erection after shaking her hand. This is one of many increasingly dumb scenes in an extremely dumb movie that, against all odds, begins to warm up on us in ways we don’t expect.
When Office Romance is bad, it’s bad. So terrible you want to turn it off. Every scene involving Daniel’s sister, Lizzy (Jodie Whittaker), is a disaster. Not that the former Doctor Who actress gives a bad; far from it (she’s actually unrecognizable), but the character itself has no purpose that feels believable in any real human drama, even if two siblings face the same situation. Lizzy is locked up in prison for – get this – beheading someone. Murder. She was going to be on death row, until Daniel stepped in and had her transferred. That should theoretically have massive emotional repercussions for the character, but it actually doesn’t? They’re siblings who frequently speak to one another, and that’s it. No examination of Daniel’s interiority, or how he feels that his sister will be locked up for the rest of her life.
When Jackie eventually finds out about this by following Daniel to the prison, it barely registers as something significant for the two characters. Of course, Jackie is visibly angry – and pissed – that Daniel never told her about this situation, but it gets easily resolved and never mentioned again. The same thing happens when Parker and writers Goldstein and Joe Kelly attempt to draw some drama involving Jackie’s complex relationship with her father, Captain Jack Cruz (Edward James Olmos).
Jack was the former CEO of the company before Jackie took over but has been sitting at every board meeting and has belittled her talents at every turn, calling her a derogatory name and never highlighted the contributions she made as the CEO, including basically saving the entire company from bankruptcy. It’s a pretty significant moment for Jackie, especially as she considers decision that might affect her future near the end of the movie, but the screenplay never makes this an urgent dramatic arc for the character that she needs to confront before growing further as a protagonist. There’s a quasi-confrontation between the two, but does it matter when the film is all said and done? Not really.
This is the fundamental problem that has defined most Netflix movies: conversations appear human, but don’t feel so. This has also defined most of Parker’s work, but he’s more than compensated with a deft eye for shot composition and letting his actors loosen up. Sadly, even with Robert Yeoman, Parker doesn’t know where to place his camera and crafts an array of visually unpleasant sequences that my eyes would like to wipe out of my memory but is physically unable to. Yeoman is usually reliable with blocking, even when working in comedies (he’s collaborated with Parker before on the visually resplendent Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again), but he feels completely out of his element here. The camera never reveals parts of the visual jokes and positions the characters at the center of the frame with little to no romantic tension that develops as the film progresses.
And yet, it somehow works? Bear with me for a second. You clicked “play” on this film to see Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein slowly develop a romantic relationship, as the title (and poster) suggests, right? When Parker focuses on this element, it’s pure movie magic. It’s a pairing that I never imagined would function in my mind, especially considering that Goldstein tried his hand at the romantic drama with the dreadfully boring All of You. But there’s something so ineffably funny about the way Jackie and Daniel’s relationship blossoms that you begin to buy into its charms and become invested in their quest to break the company’s policy of “no inter-office relationships.”
It results in a film that takes unexpected directions when focusing on its core romance and knows how to make us laugh. I laughed in places I didn’t think I would, but Goldstein and Lopez play their parts so well that we feel encouraged to root for them and have that relationship reach an inevitable conclusion. When it does, the emotional culmination to that sweeping romantic moment might not feel fully earned, but does it really matter when Netflix films are specifically engineered to make you turn your brain off and not fully think about what’s on screen?
That’s a problem in and of itself, but less so when you’re making a dumb rom-com destined to be consumed and forgotten like Office Romance. The truth is that it could’ve been much worse than what it ended up being, and the fact that Brett Goldstein can match Jennifer Lopez’s allure, despite so many cringeworthy scenes, seems like a Herculean (pun intended, even though we’ll never see him in the MCU again) feat. I can’t, in good conscience, recommend it, but I also can’t entirely dismiss it. Bizarre, but it is, in many respects, a spellbinding object that must be seen to be believed, and if you want to print that quote and put it on the poster, I’d be more than honored.