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Netflix has a bit of a reputation for making bad romcoms. They certainly produce a lot of films in the genre, presumably because they are popular and relatively cheap to make, and the quality is not as high as it could be. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that as a rule they are mediocre, at the least forgettable, and there is no denying that a portion of them, movies like Mother of the Bride, Irish Wish, Ladies First, Desperados, The Wrong Missy and The Kissing Booth, are indeed absolutely terrible. Even those that gather some promising big name talent like A Family Affair, Isn’t it Romantic, Your Place or Mine and Hot Frosty, often feel underwritten and laboured. This is all probably down to things like quick turnarounds, high volume, limited budgets and an understanding of audience’s undemanding background viewing habits but it is still tempting to rather see it as some kind of curse. 

This idea is no more evident than it is with the streamer’s latest film Office Romance. The script is by none other than Brett Goldstein who previously did brilliant work on the Apple TV series Ted Lasso and Shrinking. His writing on last year’s All of You was not as broadly comedic but showed the same understanding of relationships and human frailty that underpin the comfortable laughs in both of his celebrated shows. Joe Kelly authors with him here and he also has Ted Lasso on his CV, as well as the whip-smart sitcom How I Met Your Mother. There are most certainly flashes of what we might expect from men with this pedigree here but so much of the rest of the movie is cliched and pedestrian. The places where it pushes boundaries in its heavy use of the c word and in a surprisingly graphic birth scene, feel out of place among the awkward date scenes, corny escapes to secluded exotic holiday locations and hackneyed city wide dashes to tell someone you love them before it’s too late. It is like it is some Goldstein Vs Netflix artistic battle, one coming at you with bold language relating too (and shots of) female genitalia and the other fighting to burying it all under safe predictability and leaden tropes. Whether it is corporate interference or unwanted magical intervention making it happen, it is a very clumsy mix. 

The movie has opposing strengths and weaknesses then. It is sex positive and direct in a way that seems perhaps typical of an edgy UK writer like Goldstein but at the same time it features some odd caricatures of English people. Elsewhere it presents an unconventional side plot around Jody Whittaker being a likeable psycho while ending with a press conference scene clumsily lifted from Nottingham Hill. It also has Goldstein himself as an unlikely leading man for a romcom but casts him opposite Jennifer Lopez who has almost as many of these in her filmography as namesake Aniston. 

There is enough that works here to lift it above the majority of Netflix’s relatable output but ultimately they just can’t break away from convention. It has some real moments this isn’t going to make anyone think differently about what to expect from them with this kind of thing.