Office Romance

Netflix

Netflix continues its bumpy pursuit of an original film lineup, with some stellar hits and other big misses. Plus, there’s the endless debate over what should or should not be allowed to hit theaters, however briefly. One that has been planted firmly on Netflix and Netflix alone is Office Romance, the new romantic comedy starring Brett Goldstein and Jennifer Lopez. Is it actually worth checking out, however? Well, both critics and audiences have given their reviews, and they are in lockstep that it is…pretty mediocre.

While everyone on Earth obviously knows Jennifer Lopez, you may also know Brett Goldstein as the permanently angry soccer player Roy Kent on Ted Lasso. But he’s done much more than that, also the co-creator of Shrinking, possibly the best comedy on TV, where he also wrote a number of episodes. Now, he wrote Office Romance as well, in addition to starring as Lopez’s love interest. There were rumors that he and Lopez ended up dating in real life, but that does not appear to be happening. At least currently.

As it stands, critics and fans agree the film is… not amazing. It currently boasts a rare tie on Rotten Tomatoes with a 51% critic score and a 51% audience score as well. It’s 6/10 on IMDb, which isn’t much better.

The film stars Lopez as Jackie, the CEO of Air Cruz, who has a strict no-dating policy in her company, but that changes when Goldstein, a lawyer, begins working for her. You may be able to guess what happens from there.

The movie is…a lot. Its tone shifts all over the place to being rather sweet to incredibly raunchy, including one moment later in the film that’s something of a jumpscare, and is currently being passed around social media.

Why aren’t critics thrilled with it? Here’s a sampling:

• RogerEbert.com (0.5/4) – “The dialogue sounds like it came out of an R-rated fortune cookie. Even worse, just when you think it’s over, there are extra scenes during the credits to prolong the agony.”
• AV Club (D-) – “While the romance here feels tenuous at best, the comedy is in even worse shape, often mistaking uncomfortable oversharing for punchlines. If this was meant to be a return to form for Lopez, it’s not a satisfying comeback.”

Lopez, obviously, is a veteran of many romantic comedies, from The Wedding Planner to Maid in Manhattan. Those movies were received even worse than Office Romance (The Wedding Planner has a brutal 17% Rotten Tomatoes score), but that didn’t prevent them from becoming genre classics. We’ll see if that could happen with Office Romance.

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