Joel on Film

Screenwriters Brett Goldstein and Joe Kelly devise a romcom scenario with a lot of promise in Office Romance, which has (in theory, at least) plenty of romance and a healthy dose of comedy—legally fulfilling both halves of the appropriate shorthand. Why, then, is every inch of this endeavor simultaneously tortured in its attempt to sell us on the central romance and painfully unsuccessful in its every attempt to be funny? What on earth went wrong here?

Perhaps the reason can be found in the performances from Goldstein, as company lawyer Daniel Blanchflower, and Jennifer Lopez, as a major airline’s chief executive officer Jackie Cruz. One would expect the opposite to be the case, of course, what with Goldstein’s classical handsomeness (that strong jaw and generally debonair bouquet) and Lopez’ off-the-charts beauty (especially well-communicated in the costuming department here, because she pulls off the pantsuits). Somehow, both of these actors are off-putting in this particular scenario, but of course, that’s due to this specific scenario.

So, perhaps, that’s where the problem lies, with its fully contrived scenario that does not lend itself to a romantic-comedy scenario. The joke is that Daniel and Jackie are both hilariously committed to the airline’s policy about interoffice relationships, until both of them become just as committed to getting in each other’s pants. Well, it would be a stretch to call this joke, since there’s barely any set-up beyond the foreplay in advance of the sexual activity and almost certainly no punch line beyond the natural resolution of the barest conflict.

The movie is entirely devoted to the former of those parts of the joke, which gives the actors a lot of leeway to embarrass themselves in a series of scenes designed to establish that they’re really, really attracted to each other. Daniel, the tightly wound and impersonal-by-choice legal representative, is physically attracted to Jackie in a way that he literally cannot hide upon first meeting her. Jackie, meanwhile, is at first turned off and, then, helplessly drawn to Daniel, which sort of suggests that maybe it wasn’t a great idea to hire two men to write this character.

That feeling shows up quite often, too, with the film’s voluminous supporting cast, a lot of whom are not really worth mentioning for how little they mean to the whole production. The ones who do warrant a reference include Edward James Olmos (as Jackie’s father, the man who made the airline into what it is), Jodie Whittaker (as Daniel’s sister, incarcerated for a crime so shocking that it’s difficult to pay attention to anything else for a few minutes after hearing it), Betty Gilpin (as Jackie’s assistant, whose extreme pregnancy is only a plot to device to give us the graphic, close-up delivery) and Bradley Whitford (as Daniel’s supervisor, who decides to sue a food truck when he chokes on a breakfast burrito—and that’s the whole joke). There are so many more actors here, though, that the various mini-subplots and throwaway asides are just here to distract from the main plot.

The whole thing is directed with an absence of style or charm by Ol Parker, and once we get to the film’s idea of poking fun at the familiarity of the romantic comedy, it’s just a number of witless riffs on those tropes—the easily resolvable misunderstanding, the bad experiences with dinner outings, the mad last-minute rush to confess love in spite of the obvious obstacles (in front of a lot of people, which for some reason makes it increasingly less funny). Office Romance might be riffing on those tropes, which technically means we’re supposed to process them slightly differently than we would with a more sincere treatment, but the combination of sour humor and irritating characters means that that attitude approaches contemptible in its ambition.

Rating: * (out of ****)