‘Office Romance’ Review: An Office Rom Com That Is NSFW

Life can be uncertain but one of the certainties that keeps us at peace is knowing that romantic comedies live and die on one thing: whether you buy the two people at the center of them. You can forgive predictable plotting, familiar story beats or even forgive a third-act misunderstanding you’ve seen coming from a mile away. If the chemistry works, audiences will happily follow along. That’s ultimately why Office Romance works as well as it does.

Directed by Ol Parker and co-written by Brett Goldstein and Joe Kelly, the film doesn’t reinvent the romantic comedy. It doesn’t particularly try to. Instead, it takes a very familiar setup, adds a healthy dose of R-rated NSFW British humor, and relies on its cast to carry the rest.

At the center is Jackie Cruz (Jennifer Lopez), the CEO of Air Cruz, an airline company founded by her father. Despite years of success, she’s still fighting accusations that she only has her position because of family connections. The company is facing legal troubles, the board is constantly questioning her leadership, and she’s trying to maintain a strict anti-fraternization policy throughout the organization.

Enter Daniel Blanchflower (Brett Goldstein), a British lawyer working several rungs below her in the corporate hierarchy. Daniel is intelligent, awkward, emotionally guarded, and carrying enough personal baggage to fill an overhead compartment. Through a series of increasingly ridiculous circumstances, the two end up working closely together on a legal case and quickly discover that professional boundaries are becoming difficult to maintain.

The plot basically writes itself from there! What surprised me wasn’t where the story goes but how much fun it is getting there. The biggest reason is the chemistry between Lopez and Goldstein. The screenplay never gives them especially unique characters. If you stripped away the names and occupations, you’ve seen versions of these people in countless romantic comedies before. The high-powered executive. The charming outsider. The attraction they know is a bad idea but pursue anyway. To the surprise of no one, it works.

A lot of that comes down to how comfortable the two actors feel together. What ultimately sells the relationship is that Lopez and Goldstein never feel like they’re forcing it. Their scenes together have an easy rhythm that the rest of the film benefits from. Goldstein’s dry, awkward energy bounces well off Lopez’s confidence, and the movie gets a lot of mileage out of watching Daniel constantly find himself in situations he’s completely unequipped to handle. The attraction between them is immediate, but it doesn’t feel rushed because both actors seem genuinely comfortable sharing the screen. Even when the script falls back on familiar rom-com beats, they make the relationship feel believable enough that you stop worrying about where it’s headed and just enjoy spending time with them.

The film is also much raunchier than most mainstream studio rom-coms have been in recent years, and that gives it a certain energy. The humor isn’t all that sophisticated, but it feels refreshingly willing to be a little messy. Some jokes miss or fall completely flat, but enough of them land that the movie maintains a steady momentum.

Goldstein’s influence as a writer is especially noticeable. His brand of humor, particularly the cultural clashes between Daniel’s British bluntness and his American coworkers, generates some of the film’s funniest moments. There’s an extended running joke involving workplace language and profanity (that won’t be named for obvious reasons) which had me laughing.

However, the movie’s secret weapon is probably Betty Gilpin. Playing Jackie’s executive assistant, Sydney, Gilpin seems to be operating in a slightly different movie than everyone else, and that is meant as a compliment. Sydney’s increasingly obsessive devotion to her job creates some of the funniest scenes in the film. Even when the script sidelines her for borderline stretches, she has a way of stealing focus whenever she reappears. It’s the kind of supporting comedic performance that elevates material that might otherwise feel routine.

Unfortunately, routine is still the word I’d use to describe much of the screenplay. For all the fun the film provides, there’s very little here that feels genuinely fresh. The boardroom conflicts, the workplace romance complications, the inevitable obstacles threatening the relationship, blah blah blah, every major story beat arrives exactly when you’d expect it to. The film knows the formula and embraces it, which isn’t necessarily a flaw, but it does mean very few surprises along the way.

Some of the side stories also feel underdeveloped. Jackie’s complicated relationship with her father should carry more emotional weight than it does. The film repeatedly references her struggle with accusations of nepotism, but it rarely digs beneath the surface. Likewise, Daniel’s family history involving his imprisoned sister sounds like it belongs to a much more interesting movie than the one we’re watching. The screenplay introduces these details, then largely leaves them sitting on the sidelines.

The corporate legal drama doesn’t fare much better. Air Cruz spends most of the film dealing with lawsuits and various professional headaches, but the stakes never feel particularly urgent. Part of that comes from the genre itself. We know where this story is headed. The company will survive. The romance will survive. The real question is how amusing the journey will be. Thankfully, it’s pretty amusing.

I don’t think Office Romance is destined to become a defining romantic comedy of its era. It’s not sharp enough, distinctive enough, or emotionally rich enough for that. The characters aren’t memorable in the way the best rom-com leads tend to be, and the story follows a path that’s been traveled countless times before. But I laughed quite a bit. I enjoyed spending time with the cast. The romance is believable even when the screenplay is predictable. And sometimes that’s enough.

Not every romantic comedy needs to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it just needs two attractive people with convincing chemistry, a few strong supporting performances, and enough jokes to keep things moving. Office Romance checks all of those boxes. It may not be the kind of movie people are still talking about ten years from now, but for nearly two hours, it’s a pretty good time.

Office Romance is currently available to stream exclusively on Netflix.