Jennifer Lopez has a hair toss in this movie. You’ll know the one. The camera slows down for it, the lighting goes golden, and Brett Goldstein looks at her the way the film has decided he should look at her. It’s a perfectly executed hair toss. And I sat there thinking: this is the most alive this movie is going to feel.
I was right.
Office Romance is the kind of film that makes you question your own goodwill. I came in wanting it to work I genuinely did. Lopez hasn’t had a proper romantic comedy vehicle in years, and Goldstein, who built so much quiet credibility on Ted Lasso and Shrinking, seemed like a strange but possibly inspired choice opposite her. There’s a version of this movie that’s eccentric and warm and funny. Someone made a different version.
The movie follows Lopez plays Jackie Cruz, CEO of Cruz Airlines, a New Jersey company tangled in litigation. Goldstein plays Daniel, a lawyer new to the firm who ends up alone in a room with her and then alone on her private plane to the Dominican Republic because the senior partner choked on a burrito. The company has a strict no-fraternization policy. You know where this is going. The film knows you know. It doesn’t particularly care.
What bothers me isn’t the predictability. Every romantic comedy is predictable. The pleasure is in the texture the specific way two people circle each other, the dialogue that sounds like it cost something to say, the moment where you think oh, these two. None of that is here. The dialogue sounds like it was generated by a machine asked to approximate flirtation. Characters say things like they’re reading them for the first time. Goldstein, who can do so much with a pause, is given nothing to pause about.
There’s a scene early on, before they even meet, where Daniel is on a date with a woman from his gym. She gets drunk. She makes a scene. It goes nowhere and tells us nothing except that Daniel is available and his life is unremarkable. Meanwhile Jackie has a business dinner with a man who mistakes it for a date, breaks down about his divorce, and volunteers information about his pornography habits. This is the film’s idea of setup. This is what it thinks is funny.
The legal mechanics are a particular kind of lazy. I don’t expect procedural accuracy from a romantic comedy, I’d be a fool to but the film asks us to accept that the entire fate of Jackie’s airline, her relationship with her skeptical father (Edward James Olmos, doing quiet, dignified work in scenes that don’t deserve him), and her standing with the board all hinge on whether she’s sleeping with her lawyer. And that defending the case requires a detailed accounting of her sex life. The stakes feel less like drama and more like a terms-and-conditions agreement that two people signed without reading.
I kept waiting for the film to find its register. It never does. There are crude jokes a lot of them delivered in the breezy tone of a movie that thinks it’s being cheeky, but they sit badly against the glowy romance the film also wants to be selling. A character jokes about having beheaded someone with a machete. There’s a childbirth scene with close-ups that have no business being in a film that also has slow-motion hair tosses. A male character, in the opening minutes, casually references masturbating to photographs of his ex-wife. None of this is shocking, exactly. It’s just wrong-shaped. Like a joke told in the middle of someone else’s sentence.
The film also uses the word, a British slang term that gets a pass in London pubs but carries different weight in an American film about a Latina CEO, repeatedly, casually, as though someone on set heard it in a UK production and thought it traveled. It doesn’t.
Bradley Whitford is in this. He plays the burrito-choking senior partner who sets the plot in motion and is then largely forgotten. He’s a genuinely funny actor. He is not funny here, because the film doesn’t give him anything to be funny with. This is the pattern. Good people. Empty rooms.
The third act offers a character stuck in the Holland Tunnel on the way to a crucial meeting, who still somehow arrives at exactly the right moment. I don’t know what to tell you. Someone wrote Holland Tunnel and kept it. There’s also a heavily pregnant character introduced early, you’ll notice her, the film wants you to notice her, and yes, she delivers, in both senses of the word, in a scene the film seems to think is endearing and which I found deeply misjudged.
And then, after the movie ends, there are extra scenes during the credits. More scenes. As though the film sensed it hadn’t finished irritating you.
Goldstein walks away from this with his reputation intact because he doesn’t have enough to do to damage it. Lopez is doing everything she was hired to do, she’s beautiful, she’s technically charming, she hits her marks, but the film never asks her to be surprised by anything, and surprise is where romantic comedy lives. The best moments in the genre are the ones where a character discovers something they didn’t expect to feel. Jackie Cruz never discovers anything. She arrives knowing. She leaves knowing. And so do we, almost
Office Romance isn’t a disaster in the way that’s fun to write about. It’s a disappointment in the way that’s just a little sad, a film made by people who understood the components of a romantic comedy without understanding what makes a romantic comedy feel like anything at all.
Office Romance (2025) is Rated R
Parental Content Breakdown
Violence & Intensity: Mild–Moderate No on-screen violence. A character casually jokes about decapitating someone with a machete, played for laughs in a tonal mismatch. A choking scene is used as comedy. No physical danger or action sequences.
Language: Strong; Pervasive crude language. Repeated use of a misogynistic British slang term used casually throughout. Multiple dick jokes. Strong sexual language woven into dialogue, not isolated to single scenes.
Sexual Content / Nudity: High; Very crude sexual content throughout. A character’s erection is played for comedy. A male character references masturbating to photos of his ex-wife in the opening scene. A graphic childbirth sequence includes two close-up shots of a baby crowning. A character’s sex life is a central plot device.
Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking: Moderate; A supporting character becomes drunk and disruptive on a date used for comedy. Social drinking throughout corporate and romantic scenes. No drug use or smoking depicted.
Recommended for 17+: Strictly adults and older teens. The R rating reflects pervasive crude sexual content, strong language, and graphic imagery in a film that otherwise markets itself as a lighthearted romance. The tonal whiplash alone is disorienting for younger viewers.
