There are certain people in the world (me) for whom a romantic comedy pairing of Jennifer Lopez and Ted Lasso Emmy-winner Brett Goldstein is ideal.
There’s Jennifer Lopez, royalty of the genre, incandescent movie star, and patron saint of Kevin Fallon’s joy. And there’s Goldstein, the grouchy and scowling Roy Kent with an irresistible heart of gold beating beneath that oh-so-masculine hairy chest.
In Office Romance, her solar-flare charisma refracting against his deadpan armor is a refreshing shift from the typical raging battle of sheer magnetism that defines—and neuters—most rom-com scene partners. There’s nothing neutered about this movie, now streaming on Netflix, a surprisingly frisky R-rated addition to J.Lo’s Swooning Cinematic Universe (the only cinematic universe I care about).
Reviews of rom-coms are reliably insufferable, rejecting the expected beats of the genre as lazy and the predictability as juvenile. If you see my eyes bouncing somewhere down the West Side Highway, please grab them for me. I seem to have rolled them too hard.
Office Romance is a prime example of giving the people who want to watch a movie like this exactly what they want. For rom-com lovers, yeah, it’s predictable. Thank god for that. It’s so satisfying.