MATTHEW BOND and BRIAN VINER review Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein’s raunchy new film Office Romance – after dating rumours swirled

Review by Matthew Bond

Evaluation:

Are Jennifer Lopez and Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein in a relationship? Lopez says no, but the rumors continue to keep gossip writers busy.

And now we’re all getting the chance to watch the movie that sparked those rumors: Office Romance, in which Lopez plays Jackie Cruz, the boss of the successful New Jersey airline Air Cruz, and Goldstein plays Daniel Blanchflower, the new British in-house lawyer who falls in love with her (I think Goldstein is a Tottenham Hotspur supporter). Difficult.

The problem is that such internal relationships are strictly against company rules, and anyone found guilty of violating these rules faces immediate dismissal.

There is no doubt that Lopez and Goldstein have a good cinematic chemistry, and this chemistry is partly helped by the script that Goldstein wrote with Joe Kelly, one of the creators of Ted Lasso.

But while the general tenor of the rom-com journey feels comfortingly familiar (bad, then good, then bad again…), the tone is rather uneven, despite the director being Ol Parker, the British filmmaker responsible for Mamma Mia. Here We Go Again and, more specifically, Ticket To Paradise, the stylish romantic comedy starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

God, Americans like their comedies broad and simple, don’t they? In the past, when laughter levels were weakening, an unfortunate character would suffer a sudden attack of diarrhea.

Here Parker opts for a scene of sudden sexual arousal that feels ridiculous and completely out of place, as in a sequence where the C-word is used dishonestly over and over again. It is no less offensive in Britain, as Goldstein and Parker must know.

On the plus side, a long-awaited birthing scene (Cruz’s right-hand woman, beautifully played by Glow star Betty Gilpin, is heavily pregnant throughout) is hilarious, as is a sequence involving a food truck and The West Wing star Bradley Whitford. It’s J-Lo’s sheer star power that finally pushes this over the line.

There’s no doubt that Lopez and Goldstein have good on-screen chemistry, which helped to some extent with the script, which Goldstein co-wrote with Joe Kelly, one of the creators of Ted Lasso.

Brian Viner review

Evaluation:

Office Romance (15, 94 minutes, HHIII) is a cute but forgettable romantic comedy directed by Ol Parker and co-written by Brett Goldstein (of Ted Lasso fame).

He shamelessly cast himself as Daniel, a British lawyer working for a US airline. Jennifer Lopez finds her increasingly irresistible as Jackie, the company’s CEO.

There’s also a rather unnecessary subplot featuring Jodie Whittaker as Daniel’s incarcerated sister and plenty of culture clash jokes; most of these work well, but a few (notably a routine about how the British habitually use the C-word and mean no offense by it) are chronically misjudged.

However, I did laugh at Daniel’s out-of-his-depth casual football analogy – ‘I’m like Jude Bellingham playing right-back in your Sunday League pub team’ – which needs so much explanation that he immediately regretted saying it.

And I loved Betty Gilpin as Jackie’s overprotective assistant who is horrified at the prospect of Jackie falling for Daniel. ‘It would be like Helen of Troy having sex with Mr. Bean,’ he says.

Office Romance is on Netflix.