- Director: Ol Parker
- Screenplay: Brett Goldstein, Joe Kelly
- Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Brett Goldstein, Betty Gilpin
- Cinematography: Robert Yeoman
- Editing: Peter Lambert
- Score: Michael Andrews
- Genre: Romantic comedy
- Runtime: 115 minutes
Never mix business with pleasure. That’s the mistake Jackie Cruz (Lopez), an airline CEO, makes when she meets Daniel Blanchflower (Goldstein), a lawyer hired as the company’s legal counsel. The corporation is beset by legal issues so the two will be seeing quite a bit of each other. Sparks fly and there’s palpable chemistry between the pair, so much so that an off-screen romance was speculated about yet was denied by Lopez herself.
A courtship is off the cards as there’s a strict ‘no dating’ policy in the organisation. Jackie keeps things by the book…for a while at least. A jaunt to the Dominican Republic for a deposition provides the perfect backdrop to give in to temptation. Jackie and Daniel have a one-on-one and get down to business. That’s me being subtle – something the film never attempts to be.
Daniel’s nationality (he’s British) is referred to so often it gets tedious quickly. It’s as if the characters haven’t ever met a Brit in the wild before. I thought it might be a jab at ‘Ted Lasso‘ star Goldstein’s English gentility until I discovered he actually had a hand in scripting the movie. Is he mocking himself? We get it, you’re a bloody Brit!
Anyway, you’d think he would bring a more sophisticated writing quality to the table but the whole thing smacks of your standard poor American rom-com; kooky side characters serving absolutely no purpose, humour that doesn’t land and a cheesy happy ending. It’s formulaic to the point of inducing boredom. A comedy on cruise control.
‘Office Romance‘ is NSFW – by which I mean not safe for watching.
My rating: 4 / 10
SilverScreen 