Picture Credit: Netflix
Multi-hyphenate Jennifer Lopez (aka J.Lo or Jenny From the Block) has long reigned as streaming royalty in the past few years. Whether on Prime Video or on Netflix, J.Lo is in your home and here to stay. Her recent Netflix films have seen varied success, and now, with Office Romance, she partners with the big red N for the fourth time—this time breaking from her previous action roles. Back to her roots in a tender yet hilariously raunchy rom-com. How does it stack up against her other Netflix original features? Let’s find out.
Here’s every Jennifer Lopez Netflix Original movie ranked as of the release of Office Romance (read our full review here).
Atlas
Atlas is a painfully unwatchable sci-fi action flick with PS4-level CG VFX. Its story of human-AI friendship is uninteresting, even benign, and challenges your intelligence. You will lose a brain cell or two from watching. Jennifer Lopez, playing an AI-hating data analyst, tries to have chemistry with the AI voice in her crashed mech suit (voiced by Gregory James Cohan), but it falls flat, yet makes so much of this dull movie’s run time. Her AI-bro Simu Liu, a robot out to destroy humanity, adds little drama. Atlas feels like a fake movie gag from 30 Rock, stretched to feature length and given a $100 million price tag.
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The Mother
If you wanted to see Jennifer Lopez as a killer assassin in cool, snow parkas and Bourne-like spy attire, sniping bad guys out to traffic civilians and protect her estranged daughter, this is for you. She provides a fine performance for what the story requires her to do: getting fingers bloody as a rugged killer trying to connect with the kid she gave up long ago, but observing to protect from afar. She provides a good range and makes the film pretty watchable for what it is, but her performance can’t punch the weight above this painfully generic R-rated actioner, bogged down by a generic script and Niki Caro’s poor action filmmaking.
Jennifer Lopez: Halftime
Halftime is mostly a vanity doc project that wouldn’t work for the unequivocal agreement across everyone with eyes that Hustlers was Jennifer Lopez’s career peak as an actress, and the snubbing of her performance as stripper and sharp con-woman Ramona is nothing short of [Fiona Apple voice] criminal.
In many ways, the doc’s structure, framed around her first real campaign amid prepping for the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime show, is bizarre. Heck, I’m flabbergasted by how much that overshadows her prep. It’s a slight profile doc that in many cases is airy and sometimes can’t take in complete seriousness (so many call backs to one South Park episode “Fat Butt and Pancake Head” took me out and don’t forget framing Laura Dern as a villain in her Golden Globe win) and doesn’t really feel like it’s scratching any new boundaries of Lopez outside her identity and her being a representative voice for Latin Americans. But then, in others, it is very engaging to see her New Yorker work hustle as a performer.
Office Romance
This is easily the best of her Netflix films, though that’s a low bar. Still, Office Romance channels early 2000s J.Lo rom-coms that, despite tropes and crudeness, made you believe in love. She and Brett Goldstein share real chemistry, with their slow-burn dynamic and shy glances making you smile. The film is as funny as it is heartwarming. Goldstein and Joe Kelly have crafted a blend of J.Lo rom-coms, shaping it into something original and charming—a rewatchable, lovable movie that marks her best work in the genre.
Now it’s over to you – what’s your favorite of the four so far? Let us know in the comments.
