Before dating apps, love in the workplace was one of THE ways you would find a partner. Or, at least get seduced by Demi Moore or end up in one of several lifetime original movies. Jennifer Lopez is always working in some form or another, so, Netflix thought might as well merge two of her interests. A little JLo greatest hits, if you will.
Lopez plays Jackie Cruz, CEO of AirCruz, a well run New Jersey based airline trying to expand. However, rival CEO William Butten (Roger Bart) of Falcon Airlines is trying to sue/injunction Jackie to death to prevent the airline from their goals. After a tragic burrito accident takes out ace AirCruz counsel Peter Vance (Bradley Whitford), Daniel Blanchflower (Brett Goldstein) is brought onto the pitch, as his Brits might say. Daniel’s attention to details in the hearings impresses Jackie, enough to consider disregarding the company’s no dating policy, and risking the ire of her very dutiful, VERY pregnant right hand woman, Sydney Bloom (Betty Gilpin).
Office Romance is mostly standard romcom fare. There’s standard awkward encounters, sexy dancing, convoluted subplots, game side characters, you get the idea. The script is a bit all over the place; we get a lot of relatively benign flirting for a while until random out of nowhere gross out gags come along for the sake of jokes and jokes alone. That doesn’t totally work, but hey its trying to be daring, and that’s better than nothing. I also appreciate the movie’s old fashioned nature only applying to the setup and not JLo’s Jackie. There’s no weird gender dynamics here, and if anything the main tension in the movie is more about Jackie’s ability to be taken seriously by men in power that aren’t Daniel, keeping the romcom stuff more light and free of tone deaf office politics conversations. So, yay?
At least the cast seems game for it, especially Brett Goldstein. If I were a writer I also would write a story where Jennifer Lopez falls in love with me. He’s doing white collar Roy Kent, distantly British but with a big heart underneath. JLo is dashing as ever, never aging and killing it on the beach in dresses and bikinis, just as well in a pantsuit in a boardroom. The two of them aren’t breaking TV sets, but they’re cute and a good enough match for a Netflix romcom. The big winner for me was Betty Gilpin, who I liked in other things, but has the most fun being the muscle behind JLo’s face of AirCruz, snarking and invading privacy like it’s a god given right of hers.
Office Romance hits the Netflix romcom sweetspot. Just slightly above forgettable, enough to click on and half pay attention to as other stuff is going on. And Brett, as cool as it must have been to fulfilling a kissing JLo fantasy, dream bigger, like Jon Favreau did in Chef, where his ex wife was Sofia Vergara and his current girlfriend is Scarlett Johansson. Now THAT’s how you write a fantasy script.