Film Review: Office Romance

The Netflix romcom Office Romance with Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein has plenty of British–American “culture clash” jokes to show the different worlds her ice queen airline CEO and his reserved British lawyer come from.

I even came up with a joke that could have made the shooting script to poke fun at the British and American pronouncements of harassment. Whether you say harASSment or harassment, what you do with your ass is your business on both sides of the Atlantic.

Did you laugh? I’ll forgive you if you didn’t. But would you have preferred this lighthearted joke to the Office Romance “C U Next Tuesday” monologue? Apparently the C-word is a term of affection in Great Britain for any social situation. Really? I remember this being suggested in the HBO drama Succession too. Since when is it a jokey term in our country?

I suspect the intention of this C-bomb monologue is to create a YouTube moment to promote the film and keep it social. Twats sharing and imitating it, calling each other a c**t even if they haven’t watched the film. A Whasupp wannabe for 2026.

Now that I have finished my Mary Whitehouse morality rant. Lopez plays Jackie Cruz, a CEO living in the shadow of her legendary pilot father. Her staff walk on eggshells around her. She has not had sex for years because she is married to the job and scared of getting hurt again. It’s credit to Lopez’s performance that you actually believe this…just

The Air Cruz board want a more experienced man in charge while a rival airline has launched a lawsuit against her alleging she slept with an airport boss to get more gates. Under threat from every angle the last thing she needs is to risk breaking her airline’s no dating policy at work with her new British lawyer, Daniel Blanchflower.

Like most romcoms there needs to be a B story to flesh out the film although I do not remember the B story for When Harry Met Sally. This Roger Ebert review summarises the jeopardy for Office Romance. The outcome of not just litigation but also the entire fate of Jackie’s career and the company depends on whether she slept with someone, and defending the case somehow requires a detailed dossier of her sex life.

As an HR professional I found the zero-tolerance dating policy theme topical after the Coldplay Kiss Cam and CEOs being fired for lying about relationships and affairs at work. The HR boss in this film resides in a stuffy basement office and seems to have unlimited power, refusing to lift the dating ban. Interestingly, He Man in Masters of the Universe, released at the same time, ends up in a menial HR job on Earth and discovers he has the power too.

Jackie and Daniel can’t deny their feelings for each other and organise a work trip to Panama. If only they knew they were being watched. Incriminating photos! What are they going to do now? I expect thousands, maybe millions of people will watch the film to find out as it is good enough to maintain your attention to the end.

This makes me wonder why reviews were embargoed until just hours before Office Romance went live on Netflix. Dropped by her record label, low ticket sales for her last concert, the end of Bennifer, even J-Lo can experience a middle-age slump.

The critics have been fairly scathing about this raunchy R-rated romcom which has an unseen erection, a prosthetic vagina and lots of sex jokes with a particularly funny secret kink. This must be why the Jude Bellingham football comparison was included to foreshadow her passion for the Union Jack. The funniest line is the attractiveness gap between the lovers being described as “like Helen of Troy having sex with Mr Bean”.

I would give it 3 out of 5, mainly for J-Lo in her bikini! Just joking. You can trust me, I work in HR and have recorded a podcast on preventing sexual harassment at work.

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