Office Romance
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Brett Goldstein
Writers: Brett Goldstein, Joe Kelly
Director: Ol Parker
Streaming on Netflix
Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. Boy and girl live happily ever after.
That’s the time-honored formula that has defined romantic comedies since at least the days of Charlie Chaplin, and anyone who has dared tried to fiddle with that formula (other than, maybe, Woody Allen) has paid the box office price.
The trick has always been in finding new ways to make the couple “meet cute,” and novel obstacles that threaten to derail their blossoming love affair. Above all, though, the two leads must not only have individual appeal – they also need, jointly, that special something that we’ve come to describe as “chemistry.”
Tracy and Hepburn had it. Hanks and Ryan had it. And while no one this side of a fever-dreaming publicist would hope to place Jennifer Lopez and Ted Lasso costar Brett Goldstein in that romcom pantheon, the undeniably appealing pair do provide more than enough spark to power through this diverting-if-somewhat-rote story of an airline CEO (Lopez) taking up a forbidden romance with her company’s top lawyer.
Lopez plays Jackie Cruz, the no-nonsense head of CruzAir, an up-and-coming regional airline based in Northern New Jersey (shoutout to Jersey City, which finally gets a claim to screen fame beyond The Sopranos). CruzAir is about to expand service to Dallas, but faces some regulatory problems because Jackie is suspected of obtaining access to those arrival gates via a romantic tryst with an airport official. (Not clear: how that would make any legal difference. And in any case, it’s not true; we know full well that Jackie is a shrewd negotiator who would never use her superstar-class charms to close a business deal.)
When CruzAir’s top lawyer (Bradley Whitford) is suddenly incapacitated, his second-in-command, company newcomer Daniel Blanchflower, takes over the company’s defense (one can only guess that mouthful of a last name is Goldstein’s tribute to Irish soccer legend Danny Blanchflower). From the moment Daniel walks into the big boss’s office, natch, you can almost smell the pheromones in the air.
But CruzAir has a strict no-dating policy for its employees, and there’s no way two of the company’s top executives could ever violate it, right? No, not right: With a toss of her hair and a lift of his eyebrow, these two are off to the races, maintaining a mostly professional relationship by day, steaming up the windows by night.
Will these two maintain their secrecy? Can they keep canoodling on her office credenza? Or will their affair explode into the open in a scandal that would, for reasons that remain unclear, cause CruzAir to crash and burn?
More importantly, who cares? Because we’re really just here to enjoy two attractive people sneaking around, saying snappy dialogue, and flying off to exotic locales. Check, check, and check. Lopez, a real-life business mogul, is just fine as a woman driven not only to succeed in business, but also to earn the respect of her pilot/company founder father (the great Edward James Olmos, of whom we don’t see nearly enough these days). Goldstein, who co-wrote the script with Ted Lasso creator Joe Kelly, is sneaky good as the high-powered lawyer who’s slumming it as an airline corporate guy for reasons known only to him. Were you to take 10 random screen stills from Office Romance, you’d swear Goldstein never once changes his expression. But in real time, with a turn of the head, a dart of the eyes, an almost subliminal hint of a smile, he manages to convey the precise degree of fun required for a lighter-than-air romcom like this one.
One more ingredient common to every single successful romantic comedy you’ve ever seen: a strong supporting cast. (Remember Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby in When Harry Met Sally? And Robert Loggia in Big? And Carol Kane in Annie Hall?) Director Ol Parker (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) has assembled here a very deep bench: Whitford is ferociously hilarious as the corporate lawyer, Betty Gilpin nearly steals the whole show as Jackie’s incredibly pregnant and fiercely competitive right-hand woman, Jodie Whittaker (the first female Dr. Who) is unrecognizable as Daniel’s jailbird sister, and Amy Sedaris almost criminally turns what should be a cameo into a comic tour-de-force.
You will learn nothing from Office Romance. Goldstein and Kelly freely pilfer material from The Desk Set, Woman of the Year, Broadcast News and, in an over-the-top finale, The Graduate. In other words, film historians will never type the words, “It all started with a film called Office Romance…”
Still, there is nothing wrong with spending a couple of hours admiring the most enduring of movie templates. Plus, those of us who have found the loves of our lives at a nearby desk might just feel their hearts flutter a bit as these two steal glances across the lobby, share eyerolls at corporate meetings, and count the number of floors they’ll have that empty elevator to themselves.
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