Office Romance (2026)

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

Ladies First (2026)

Director: Thea Sharrock
Screenplay: Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul, Katie Silberman
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Rosamund Pike, Charles Dance, Emily Mortimer, Tom Davis, Richard E. Grant, Fiona Shaw
Cinematography: Haris Zambarloukos
Editing: Mark Everson
Score: Atli Örvarsson
Genre: Comedy
Runtime: 93 minutes

The FTSE Women Leaders Review published last year reports that 43% of roles on company boards are female occupied. Okay, so not necessarily the head honcho at the end of the table but certainly having a seat in the room is a start. That’s not to say they’re treated any better socially or even listened to as ‘Ladies First‘ suggests.

Damien Sachs (Sacha Baron Cohen) has everything he could wish for: wealth, power and the ability to charm under-30-year-old women into bed (though I highly doubt they’d sleep with him if he wasn’t so financially secure). He also has something that automatically comes with having a dong: male privilege. A package deal.

In order to save his company’s neck, he promotes the underappreciated Alex Fox (Rosamund Pike), a lady chosen because she’s alphabetically first on the list of female candidates. She’s the token woman in the boardroom, there simply to fill a space and not expected to make a peep. Damien thwacks his noggin on a pole, his attention naturally on some fleeting blonde. He awakes in a gender-flipped society where women (such as Alex) wear the trousers and men are objectified in media. The boot of chauvinism now on the other foot.

By exclusively placing women in positions of authority, the writers fight fire with fire – a move that leaves everyone burnt. I felt it trivialised the all-too-real gender imbalance. The men have become campy and obsessed with personal appearance – if you dared to suggest the opposite, you’d be rightfully chastised. As for the alpha females, those ballbusting businesswomen, I just couldn’t take them seriously. Needless to say I think women belong in the boardroom, they absolutely do. But these caricatures of the respective genders are so exaggerated as to be unhelpful. With a British cast and director, and set in Britain, the concept isn’t required as much as it is in the United States (where the screenwriters hail from); a country in which the top job is yet to be assumed by a single woman.

My rating: 5 / 10

The Naked Gun (2025)

Director: Akiva Schaffer
Screenplay: Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, Akiva Schaffer
Cast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, Danny Huston
Cinematography: Brandon Trost
Editing: Brian Scott Olds
Score: Lorne Balfe
Genre: Action crime comedy
Runtime: 85 minutes

At the close of the third ‘Naked Gun‘ film, ‘Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult‘, Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) sires a child, a baby boy. This was in 1994, so Liam Neeson (73)’s Frank Drebin Jr. was either born way earlier or he had a paper round in Iraq. You wouldn’t immediately think Neeson is a man in his 70s. He’s imminently pivoting away from action flicks, which have comprised the bulk of his second act as a movie star. It’s a smart move; he can do comedy and he’s game for a laugh here – but Neeson is no Nielsen. Although both started their careers as serious actors (Nielsen starred in ‘Forbidden Planet‘ and ‘The Poseidon Adventure‘ while Neeson got an Oscar nomination for ‘Schindler’s List‘), Nielsen’s comedic shtick proves to be hard to emulate.

‘The Naked Gun‘ (minus the subtitle or wacky opening credits scene) has the appropriate number of visual gags and inane wordplay except none of it made me chuckle, maybe raising the odd smirk here or there. The references are outdated by two decades and the celebrity cameos – from Dave Bautista, “Weird Al” Yankovich (again) and who I believe to be Priscilla Presley (though who can tell these days) – can’t rescue it either.

We’re living in an age where there’s a strong anti-cop sentiment post-George Floyd. ‘ACAB’ is scrawled on walls in graffiti and police cars are banned from appearing in Fortnite. Officers of the law are seen as figures of distrust. Political satire has never ceased, so why can we no longer poke fun at the authorities too? They get a ribbing onscreen; their buffoonery is the target of mockery and jokes made at their expense are sanctioned. No need to hurl abuse at them. Save that for Akiva Schaffer for thinking anyone could replace Leslie Nielsen.

My rating: 5 / 10