There’s no meet-cute in “Office Romance,” but the way its lovers meet is pretty cute just the same. Formidable airline CEO Jackie Cruz (Jennifer Lopez) summons her new company lawyer Daniel Blanchflower (Brett Goldstein) to her office, and he walks in to see what, in cinematic terms, we shall term the full J-Lo: She’s facing the window, bathed in an optimally angled shaft of afternoon sunlight, and turns around to greet him with a perfectly, effortlessly executed shampoo-commercial toss of her caramel-tinted mane. “Holy shit!” he says, and so do we, because, well, that’s J-Lo. Or Jackie Cruz, if you prefer, but Ol Parker’s easygoing romcom is smart enough to blur that divide: It sinks into its star power as one would into a warm bath, and if the appealingly scrappy Goldstein doesn’t match that voltage, that’s largely the point.
From the self-explanatory title downwards, nobody has overthought “Office Romance.” It mostly hits the beats you expect in the way you expect it to, and that extends to its two leads playing enjoyably to type: high-powered glamazon goddess and very ordinary British bloke, thrown together for no reason besides the fact that they’re really hot for each other. Does the chemistry between them sizzle? Yes and no. Parker’s film is surprisingly explicit where it chooses to be, but not sexually so, give or take one awkward hard-on gag: It doesn’t ask you to believe that “Helen of Troy and Mr. Bean,” in the words of its own script, would spectacularly do the nasty from the off. But you do buy that, against their own better instincts and self-estimations, they would like to, and that’s enough to keep you invested.
For a star widely viewed as a queen of the genre, Lopez has made few romantic comedies that might reasonably be regarded as keepers: Most recently, “Second Act,” “Marry Me” and “Shotgun Wedding” all had a tinny, televisual feel to them, centering Lopez, but not treating her with any palpable care or affection. “Office Romance” may be a direct-to-Netflix release, modest in scope and technique, but it has some of the tactile, burnished warmth that we routinely saw in Nineties star vehicles — thanks in part to gleaming cinematography (by Wes Anderson regular Robert Yeoman) and production design (by industry vet Kristi Zea) that feel both comfortingly lacquered and reality-adjacent — and is reflected back on its star.
And thanks to Goldstein, who co-wrote “Office Romance” with his “Ted Lasso” collaborator Joe Kelly, the film has a recognizable comic voice, if not one you’d immediately associate with Lopez. The language is bluer than is typical for a comfort-blanket romcom, with a key running joke that hinges on the differing impact of a certain four-letter c-word in British and American culture; a subplot that eventually calls on an unrepentantly psychopathic murderer to be an encouraging voice of reason likewise stands out for its needle-scratch strangeness. Some of these flourishes are jarringly funny, others merely stop the film momentarily in its tracks. But it doesn’t feel anonymous: In what’s at least partially a culture-clash story, the swings of the writing are attentive to how its characters understand each other, or don’t.
Jackie herself is a hackneyed genre fixture: the career-obsessed high-flier with no space in her diary for a relationship. But rather than pairing her with her opposite number, “Office Romance” has the subtler idea of putting two buttoned-up professionals together and gradually forcing them to make time for each other. Having relocated to the U.S. for complicated family reasons, reserved Brit Daniel still struggles with American earnestness and over-sharing, and normally wouldn’t be likely to violate the strict company ban on workplace relationships. But as he’s drafted in to represent Jackie in a high-stakes legal dispute with a rival airline, they’re both taken off guard by how much they like each other — and they’re individually likable enough that we’re far less surprised, even if they don’t make a ton of sense on paper.
From there, give or take the odd tonal fillip in the script, everything proceeds according to the romcom playbook — third-act roadblocks, reconciliations and all. It’s steered with the smoothly unassuming, generously star-focused approach that Parker brought to “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” and the George Clooney-Julia Roberts vehicle “Ticket to Paradise,” fittingly enough for a story that winds up a paean to maintaining professionalism with a human touch.
A welcome shot of acid, however, comes from invaluable supporting player Betty Gilpin, as Jackie’s hawk-eyed, heavily pregnant deputy Sydney, opposing the budding romance with vehement, borderline-irrational hostility. Spitting her lines out like needles, glowering through her scenes with consistent, focus-pulling intensity, she imbues a stock best-friend part with such specific, vituperative heat that you wonder what kind of warped, electric love story this might have been with her opposite, well, either of the leads. Playful and cottony and just peculiar enough to be memorable, “Office Romance” ultimately gives the people what they want — but if there’s any gap in the market for a discomfort-viewing romcom, we know who to cast.
Source: variety.com
