‘Office Romance’ Review: Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein Commit a Million HR Violations in a Glossy Netflix Rom-Com

Not quite as algorithmically generic as its title would imply (though I still find something dystopian and Soylent about naming movies after subgenres), Netflix’s “Office Romance” is the story of a repressed but successful CEO who feels like she isn’t allowed to show her full self at work, even though she runs the company. Women like Jackie Cruz can be on top in the modern world, but only under the condition that men will still look down on them every chance they get. 

In Jackie’s case, those men include her father (Edward James Olmos as “Captain” Jack), who passed Air Cruz down to his daughter but still looms over the regional airline like she can’t fly it on her own, and also her business rivals, who baselessly accuse her of sleeping with an executive at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport in exchange for access to its gates. She’s infantilized and hyper-sexualized in the span of a single board meeting, as the men in her airspace can’t help but think of her as a woman first, and a titan of industry second (a dilemma that Jackie has tried to reconcile by turning into a celibate workaholic). 

Needless to say, Jackie is more than a little flustered when her company’s new lead counsel — a gravel-voiced Brit (Brett Goldstein as Daniel Blanchflower) who flouts the puritanical rules of modern office culture, but has a profound respect for his boss — pops a plainly visible boner when they shake hands for the first time (Jackie does clock this, and brushes it off as simply “awkward!”). He thinks of her as a beautiful woman and a boss-ass bitch all at once, each vision of his employer perfectly separate from the other. It’s a dream come true for Jackie, but can a 56-year-old girl really dare to have it all? 

The American film industry is obviously teeming with quinquagenarian actresses who might be cast in a glossy Netflix rom-com as a character named Jackie Cruz, but “Office Romance” just so happens to star Jennifer Lopez, a hyper-charismatic Latina whose screen persona has sometimes been hampered by the roles that white Hollywood will let her play. Fantastic in the likes of “Hustlers,” “Out of Sight,” and even her self-funded ode to Ben Affleck “This Is Me… Now: A Love Story,” Lopez shines whenever she’s free to embrace her natural brashness (as she’s done more reliably in her music career), but stiffens when she tries to fit into prefab genre archetypes — that’s why her performance in the justly maligned “Gigli” is so much stronger than her turns in more formulaic fare like “Monster-in-Law” and “Second Act.” 

The most compelling thing about “Office Romance,” which would be as formulaic as it gets if not for its admirably deep bench of deranged supporting characters, is that it gives Lopez the chance to publicly negotiate between the extremes of her own screen image — to explore the frustrations of being a self-possessed woman who has to shrink herself down in order to maintain her power. Functionally directed by Ol Parker (“Imagine Me & You”), this summer trifle lacks the charm, wit, or chemistry needed to spark into anything special (even if it isn’t absent any of those things altogether), but it holds together because of how satisfyingly Lopez takes Jackie from a buttoned-up nepo baby smothered by her job to an unfettered executive who finds new authority in being herself. 

Safe and familiar as that trajectory might be in a post-#GirlBoss rom-com, Goldstein and Joe Kelly’s script adds a little spice into the mix by questioning the dictums of today’s office culture. It would be a different story if the genders were swapped, or even if Daniel worked directly under Jackie as opposed to at her pleasure, but “Office Romance” positions itself however it can to ask if zero-tolerance dating policies really make sense in a society where people are compelled to spend all of their time at work. 

Sydney, Jackie’s second-in-command, has so little time for interpersonal relationships outside of Air Cruz that she chose to be artificially inseminated; now roughly 97 weeks pregnant, she still comes to their rather vertical New Jersey office complex every day lest she give any of the men an excuse to diminish her. Played by a predictably brilliant Betty Gilpin (whose disgusted reaction shots are by far the best part of the entire movie), Sydney is a watchful protector of Jackie’s conditional success, her character weaponizing the best friend archetype into an increasingly damning satire of the lengths women need to go in order to stay on top. Her thoughts on the idea of Jackie hooking up with the English lawyer who’s representing her in a big new case? “It would be like Helen of Troy having sex with Mr. Bean.”

For his part, the gruff but cheeky Daniel — a touch more Roy Kent than Hugh Grant — does his best to keep things professional, even when his penis has other ideas. He’s got a “Keep Calm and Carry On” ethos that stems from a need to care for his incarcerated older sister (Jodie Whittaker, whose character is in jail for a reason too wild and ridiculous to spoil here), but Jackie is fed up with pretending that she doesn’t want things from life. Yada yada yada, it isn’t long before late night legal sessions turn into a clandestine affair that could get her fired, and him deported (and also fired). 

Lopez and Goldstein don’t exactly light up the screen together, telegenic as they are, and it takes a long while before their characters relax enough for their flirtation to move past the stilted phase. Rather than sink into the sinews of their dynamic, “Office Romance” prefers to vamp with various other bits of business, which range from lightly amusing (Bradley Whitford as a lawsuit-happy lawyer who almost chokes to death on a burrito), to laugh-out-loud funny (Gilpin trying to waddle up a flight of stairs), to somewhat hackneyed (Tony Hale as an HR manager scandalized by Daniel’s liberal use of the word “cunt”). 

The worst of this stuff only rankles because Jackie and Daniel’s relationship becomes less realistic after they start hooking up, as the script’s appetite for silliness — typified by the reveal of a certain fetish — gets in the way of letting the characters fade into each other more deeply (having them slow dance to a sensual bachata cover of a Mazzy Star classic is deemed sufficient). The real payoff is in watching Jackie, along with the actress playing her, slowly molt out of brand protection mode, and the always likable Goldstein is content to accept his role as a mere agent of that change. 

Sometimes that loosening is expressed through silliness, like the physical comedy of watching Jackie trip over every conceivable object in a Dominican Republic hotel room as she and Daniel make their way to the bed (part of a tropical detour that reinforces the liminal banality of the movie’s New Jersey locations, which Parker struggles for a way to spice up). But mostly it comes across through the nuances of Lopez’s performance, which isn’t one of her best, but nevertheless feels uniquely vital because of how it allows us to watch her bridge the gap between the more standard roles she’s been cast in and what she’s really capable of bringing to the table.

While “This Is Me… Now” might have been a bit of a mess, “Office Romance” suggests that Lopez is still determined to create a work-life balance on her own terms, and that’s reason enough to stick around for Jackie and Daniel’s happily ever after.

Grade: B-

“Office Romance” will begin streaming on Netflix on Friday, June 5.

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