In the Breezy Office Romance, Brett Goldstein Proves a Worthy Rom-Com Match for Jennifer Lopez
· Time
There are a few things you can reasonably expect from Office Romance, the Netlix romantic comedy in which Jennifer Lopez plays the CEO of a successful airline—she’s also a pilot, lest there be any doubts about her overachieving nature—who falls in love with one of her employees, a charming, funny British lawyer played by Brett Goldstein. You’ll find a great deal of NSFW banter, and even a highly inappropriate workplace erection. There’s a no-nonsense second banana, played by national treasure Betty Gilpin, who gets laughs as a heavily pregnant executive assistant who loves her job so much she plans return to work the day after her baby is born. And if you’ve come to Office Romance expecting Jennifer Lopez to look, in typical J. Lo fashion, ageless in an otherworldly way, you’re in for zero surprises. Her skin will have you clamoring to know what kind of illuminator she uses. Her exquisitely blown-out hair falls around her shoulders like sheets of silken honey. Her office outfits include luxe, drapey sweaters and silk charmeuse skirts that swirl around her goddess curves like a dry-clean-only caress. You can love or hate Jennifer Lopez, but the one thing you cannot do is dial down her glow factor. It ought to be enshrined in the Smithsonian.
And the truth is, you don’t even have to like Lopez to enjoy Office Romance, which breezes along on a current of enjoyable gags and reasonably lively banter. Lopez’s Jackie Cruz, who struts into work every day in don’t-mess-with-me stiletto heels, is both feared and respected by her employees. They all call her Ms. Cruz, never Jackie. She has guided her company, AirCruz, to extreme profitability. Still, she finds herself in the shadow of the company's founder, Edward James Olmos’ Captain Jack Cruz, who also happens to be her father. He's a gruff war hero who taught Jackie how to fly as a kid, and he still sits on the company’s board. During board meetings, he embarrasses and undermines her by calling her by a childhood pet name that, we’re told, translates into “Little Fatty.” Jackie is under enough pressure as it is: the company is being sued by a rival airline, whose lawyers are asserting that Jackie used “unseemly” methods to gain an impressive number of gates at a major U.S. airport. That means they’re accusing her of sleeping with a powerful man to gain favor, a charge that's clearly both sexist and misogynistic.
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A well-matched Lopez and Goldstein —Courtesy of NetflixEnter the absurdly and delightfully named Daniel Blanchflower (Goldstein), AirCruz’s hottest lawyer, in more ways than one. He's a fairly new addition to the company, and when he’s properly introduced to Ms. Cruz, he's a goner who can barely hide his feelings. Jackie pretends not to like him back—her company has a strict policy against romantic relationships in the workplace. But when the two of them take a quick work trip to the Dominican Republic—it’s Jackie, of course, at the controls of the company’s private plane—their mutual devotion to workplace ethics goes out the window, and they tumble into bed together.
The expected complications ensue. Daniel could just leave the company, but he really needs this job: he has a beloved, albeit rather fiery, sister, Lizzy (Jodie Whittaker), who needs him to stick around stateside. He and Jackie succeed in keeping their trysts secret from everyone except Gilpin’s eagle-eyed Sydney Bloom, who smokes them out almost immediately. Mercifully, she keeps her mouth shut, though she makes no secret of her worries that Daniel might undermine the authority of her boss. And sure enough, their relationship ends up threatening the company's stability, and someone has to go. You can guess who that’s going to be: in this case, it's the woman at the top who holds the power.
Betty Gilpin, hilarious as workaholic Sydney Bloom —Courtesy of NetflixIn the end, it all works out, in time-honored romantic-comedy tradition. Along the way, there are lots of jokes about how the language divides Americans from their fellow English-speakers across the pond. (Quite a few of these gags revolve around the use of a word that’s bandied about freely in Great Britain but is verboten in America, one that begins with a c and ends with a t.) Largely, though, Office Romance works because Goldstein, best known for his supporting role on Ted Lasso, has enough charisma to stand up to Lopez’s high-beam beauty. It probably doesn’t hurt that he also cowrote the script: his cowriter is Joe Kelly, one of the creators of Ted Lasso. (The director is Ol Parker, whose writing credits include The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and who directed 2018’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.) Much of the humor here is R-rated, or at least spicy PG. And even if you find yourself a little listless while watching Office Romance, it’s worth sticking with it through the end credits, which feature a riff on the absurdity of rigid human-resources regulations. The stellar comic timing of Tony Hale, as a beleaguered HR officer, nearly steals the show.
In fact, beyond the charm offensive of its two stars, that tossed-off credits sequence may hold the key to the appeal of Office Romance. In olden times, before the Me-Too era and the rise of remote work, the office was often the best place to meet your future spouse or significant other. Obviously, in the real world, relationships between powerful men and the women who work for them can be treacherous territory; historically, it’s often been the women who end up losing. But Office Romance imagines other possibilities, and recognizes the reality that people very often fall in love against their better judgment—and it can happen in the workplace as easily as anywhere else. To what degree can we, or should we, regulate the vagaries of the human heart? That’s a bigger question than “How does Jennifer Lopez get her skin to glow like that?” though you could file them both under Eternal Mysteries.