When Daniel and Jackie meet, they’re instantly attracted to each other. But their company’s zero-tolerance policy on office relationships forces them to choose between passion and profession. Foul language, multiple sex scenes and a very explicit birthing scene cause this romcom to stall on takeoff.
Jackie Cruz is all work and no play.
She’s the CEO of Air Cruz, a regional airline that she and her father built from the ground up—way up. Jackie is cool and competent. But a recent scandal has called her leadership into question.
Jackie has been accused of sleeping with (or perhaps just bribing) the owner of an airport in Texas in order to expand Air Cruz’s reach. It’s not true, Jackie says. And certainly, anyone who knows her all-work-no-play attitude would agree. But the board of Air Cruz doesn’t like Jackie. She knows they still see her as a little girl pretending to fly the plane from her dad’s lap.
But Jackie is actually a pretty good pilot—and she’s an even better CEO. Luckily, Air Cruz’s newest lawyer is almost as good at his job as Jackie is at hers.
Daniel Blanchflower quit his job as a swanky, well-paid international lawyer for “personal” reasons. He won’t say what those reasons are to his new colleagues; he never mixes his personal life with his professional one. And he takes his role at Air Cruz seriously. So when his boss—the lead attorney for Air Cruz—chokes on a piece of sausage the morning of Jackie’s deposition, Daniel’s ready to step in and save Jackie’s bacon.
Everything goes well at the deposition. Daniel makes a smooth and easy rebuttal of the charges against Jackie. But when the pair gets back to the office, things go terribly, terribly wrong.
You see, Daniel and Jackie are attracted to each other. And unfortunately, when they go to shake hands, Daniel’s attraction becomes … visible.
Jackie immediately sends Daniel out of her office. She’s astounded. He’s mortified. Yet they can’t help but wonder: Can work and play, personal and professional, come together?
More importantly, might there be some wiggle room in the company’s strict zero-tolerance policy on office romances?
Jackie and Daniel see each other for who they truly are. They feel safe around each other. And they have deep respect for one another, too. Neither of them expects the other to give up their career for this romance because they both understand how much their careers mean.
Daniel encourages Jackie to stand up to her dad, who has allowed the board of directors to bully her for years (and perhaps bullied her himself) even though she has helped the company soar. It’s risky, but confronting her dad finally allows Jackie to take flight like she never has before. Instead of being cold to her employees, she’s finally able to treat them like family, something she’s always wanted.
Jackie helps Daniel to open up about his own personal life, too. Although he’s had some friction with coworkers, he realizes he’s been too harsh—both on them and himself. So he begins to share aspects of his life and past with them. And that allows them to share, too.
A pregnant woman insists she’ll come to work the day after she gives birth. Although her boss and coworkers repeatedly advise against this, she does so anyway. Nevertheless, they are supportive of her. And eventually, she seems to find a compromise by bringing her baby to work.
After quitting his job, a man realizes that he never really liked the work to begin with. And he makes reparations to some people he wronged in that old position.
Jackie and Daniel talk about reincarnation, and it seems they perhaps believe in it at least a little bit.
For a while, Jackie and Daniel decide to give in to their carnal desires. They begin sleeping together (although they do develop a real, meaningful relationship, too). So a decent amount of the film is more or less a montage of their sexual escapades both in and out of the office. We see quite a bit of skin, but critical anatomy is kept hidden by bedsheets, camera angles or strategically placed brochures. When Daniel becomes aroused while shaking hands with Jackie, we don’t see anything onscreen. Rather, they both look down and then become flustered.
Eventually, the pair gets caught. A private investigator hired by Air Cruz’s main competitor takes photos of the two lovers while they’re on vacation. The rival threatens to expose their relationship (which could get them both fired given Air Cruz’s zero-tolerance policy) unless Jackie concedes to his demands.
We see Jackie and Daniel in various states of undress throughout the film. In one scene, they’re clearly putting their swimsuits (hers is a bikini) back on after having sex. Elsewhere, several different women wear tight-fitting and/or cleavage-baring outfits. One woman’s top slips down to reveal her bra when she becomes inebriated.
When Air Cruz adjusts its zero-tolerance policy, half a dozen people go to human resources to officially declare their relationships. They each give the man detailed accounts of their sexual dalliances, which include LGBT pairings and orgy-like groupings. He’s clearly disturbed, telling them all that he doesn’t need this much information. When one couple leaves the room, we see the man has a naked male colleague hiding behind his own door. (Nothing critical is seen.)
A woman says she became pregnant through artificial insemination because she didn’t want a relationship to interfere with her work, but she later admits her baby was conceived naturally out of wedlock. We see this woman’s exposed vagina as she’s giving birth. Daniel, who is present at the birth, asks for her consent before removing her underwear to help deliver the baby.
We learn that Jackie was married once. However, her ex-husband cheated on her with his secretary, and everyone at Air Cruz found out about it. Because of this, Jackie hasn’t dated anyone in years, and she has a bit of a reputation for being a “prude.”
When Daniel’s boss returns to work, he tries to build a legal case on Jackie’s sexual aversion rather than her professional merit. As a result, Jackie gets flustered at a press conference and makes bold (and untrue) claims to shareholders about how she has never and would never sleep with a colleague.
Jackie meets a man for what she thinks is a work dinner. Unfortunately, someone told the man that Jackie is single, so he mistakenly believes it is a date. He winds up sobbing about his ex-wife (he is recently divorced), and Jackie encourages him to give his ex a call when the dinner is over, since he clearly regrets the split.
A woman says that her ex gave her a sexually transmitted disease. The same woman jokes about giving a man a lap dance in the middle of a restaurant. A man talks about masturbation while on a date. When a man refuses to sleep with or even kiss a woman on the first date (she has a busted, bleeding lip), she insults him.
We hear a number of euphemisms throughout the film, often in the form of flirting. People talk about masturbation. A woman in prison says she’s never had more sex in her life. Two siblings openly talk with each other about their sex lives. A man admits his work has caused several of his marriages to fail. There are jokes about porn, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual harassment. A man says his private investigator has saved him money on multiple divorces.
An inebriated woman spills a drink on a man and then threatens to have her date beat him up when he gets upset. (Her date apologizes for her behavior and insists there will be no physical altercation.) She then falls off a table and smacks her face on a chair or the floor. We later see her with a swollen eye and busted lip, a tooth apparently missing.
A man gets hospitalized after choking on some sausage, but he’s ultimately OK. Someone jokes about suicide. We hear some verbal threats.
We learn a woman was imprisoned because she cut off a man’s head. She shows no remorse, stating she’d do it again if given the chance because it still makes her happy to know he’s dead. She says she would have received the death penalty if her lawyer had not negotiated a lesser sentence.
A running joke in the film surrounds the c-word. Daniel insists that where he’s from (England), the c-word is not a profanity. Rather, it can be used interchangeably to mean something good or bad. And he proceeds to provide several examples of each to his shocked human resources representative, who insists he’ll still have to write up Daniel for the incident.
So, with that, we hear about 16 uses of the c-word. There are also roughly 70 uses of the f-word and half as many of the s-word. “A–,” “a–hole,” “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–k,” “h—,” “p–ck” and the British expletive “bloody” also make it into the dialogue, as well as a couple of profane terms for male and female genitals.
God’s name gets abused at least 25 times, once paired with “d–n,” and Jesus’ name also gets misused nine times.
A woman flips off a man in disgust when he winks at her seductively.
A woman drinks multiple margaritas in a restaurant, refusing to eat and stating that she only came to the place for the drinks. She becomes heavily inebriated and starts slurring her speech even as her date tries to get her to drink some water.
It’s fair to say that Daniel and Jackie’s first evening together is at least partially influenced by alcohol. We see people drinking at bars, restaurants and homes throughout the film.
In a birthing scene, we see a baby’s head crowning. Two people assisting with the birth comment on how much hair the child has. When the mother returns to work, she lactates through her shirt.
There are some weird sexist moments sprinkled throughout the film. For instance, a man tells Daniel to “put a leash” on his date when the date gets inebriated and makes a scene in a restaurant. Elsewhere, when Daniel kindly offers to get a chair for a pregnant woman, the woman and Jackie both scold him for his “1952” attitude.
Daniel’s receptionist can sometimes overshare. For instance, she talks about a rash she got on her walk to work, and we hear she discussed the details of her irritable bowel syndrome.
When Jackie gets sued, Daniel quickly deescalates the situation by pointing out that the person suing her was using less-than-legal methods to obtain information about her. One man sues several different people seemingly for the pleasure of it. A passenger sues Air Cruz for removing him from a flight, claiming that the social media videos of him urinating on the cockpit door did not represent him accurately.
Jackie’s dad calls Jackie gordita. He insists it’s a term of affection, but someone tells Daniel it actually means “little fatty.” People lie. Daniel and Jackie fight when he lies “by omission” and she spies on him. We hear that when a woman left her family, her husband “took it out” on their kids.
You know, I miss the days of PG-13 romcoms that I could snuggle up and watch with my mom or sisters. The days when I didn’t have to worry about multiple f-bombs or people taking off most of their clothes.
These days, it seems that “romcom” has less to do with romance and comedy and more to do with raunchiness and shock. I guess that’s why most, including Netflix’s Office Romance, are rated R. I guess that’s also why the two main characters in this film—not to mention every person who streams this movie—have to watch a woman give birth on an office table before they realize how much they love each other.
Of course, that’s not all that’s wrong with Office Romance; that’s just the part I truly couldn’t have anticipated. When the scene occurs, it’s like a slap in the face because it goes from water breaking to baby crowning in about 3.5 seconds.
I guess I could have forgiven that scene—which, while graphic, is depicting the miracle of life—if not for all the other content issues. Brett Goldstein, who cowrote the script and plays Daniel, drops nearly a dozen uses of c-word in succession. His character is right: The word isn’t nearly as foul in British culture as it is in American. But that doesn’t make it a nice word, either—especially when paired with 70 uses of the f-word, among other profanities.
And then there’s just a lot of Jennifer Lopez doing what she’s been doing in movies a lot lately: dressing in outfits that show way too much cleavage for a professional office setting and then removing those outfits to jump between the sheets.
Call me a “choosy queen” (as they label Lopez’s character in the film when searching for an alternative to “prude”), but I just want a romcom that won’t make me cringe if I watch it with my mom.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
