In Review: ‘Voicemails for Isabelle,’ ‘Office Romance’

It’s a pretty slow week for new theatrical releases so The Reveal decided to check out a pair of recent streaming service rom-coms instead.

Voicemails for Isabelle
Dir. Leah McKendrick
118 min.

Voicemails for Isabelle knows what sort of movie it wants to be. In fact, it even namechecks one of its primary sources of inspiration when one of its characters directly references You’ve Got Mail, which similarly relies on a could-be couple getting to know each other via a communication service, even though here only half of the pair is doing the talking. That You’ve Got Mail dressed up a plot borrowed from The Shop Around the Corner in new technology only confirms that some set-ups have a way of resurfacing every few decades in forms refitted to suit the times. Just be glad we dodged a new twist involving AI glasses (for now).

Which isn’t to say that Voicemails for Isabelle is simply a rehash. Written and directed by Leah McKendrick (Scrambled), the film’s most distinctive element, the one featured in the title, would seem tasteless and manipulative if it wasn’t so well-written and played. Isabelle (Ciara Bravo) is the younger sister of Jill (Zoey Deutch). The two are extremely close, in part because Isabelle’s cystic fibrosis keeps her housebound, where she experiences much of life vicariously through the experiences of her sister.

This extends into adulthood when Jill, inspired by teen years binge watching Top Chef  with Isabelle, leaves her Texas hometown for San Francisco to make it big as a pastry chef under the guidance of Chef Bastien (Nick Offerman), a celebrity chef whose French accent and smiling demeanor disappear the moment he’s behind closed doors. (Is this a set-up for a Jerry Maguire-inspired moment that the script will also lampshade by referencing the movie directly? You bet it is.) Shattered by Isabelle’s unexpected death, Jill keeps sending her voicemails describing her career frustrations, her homesickness, and her disastrous love life. What she doesn’t know: Isabelle’s number has been reassigned and Wes (Nick Robinson), an ambitious real estate agent back in Texas, has been listening to them and has grown smitten with the voice on the other end.

Robinson’s fairly charming as the love interest, but it’s Deutch who makes the film work. Now a veteran of rom-coms thanks to films like Set It Up and Something From Tiffany’s, Deutch has quietly become the best star of a type of movie that doesn’t get made much anymore, and usually ends up premiering with little fanfare on one streaming service or another when they do. McKendrick (who also has a supporting role as one of Wes’s friends) asks her both to play Jill’s grief and to keep the film grounded even when it threatens to go too broad, as with a subplot involving Tyler (Toby Sandeman), a podcaster specializing in relationships who, shocker, turns out to be pretty bad at them himself. The complications and machinations might be familiar and the ultimate destination apparent from the start, but Voicemails for Isabelle proves that, in the right hands and with the right star, that doesn’t have to matter that much. —Keith Phipps

Voicemails for Isabelle is currently streaming on Netflix.

Office Romance
Dir. Ol Parker
115 min.

The odd thing about Ted Lasso is how quickly the show rushed to defuse any kind of tension or ugliness that might arise from the Major League-esque premise of a British soccer club owner deliberately sabotaging the team by hiring a dopey American football coach to manage it. It was determined to be a series about nice people, and that includes Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent, a dyspeptic midfielder who scowls and swears through every interaction but turns out to be a gummy cluster of a man—coarse on the outside, sweet and gooey at the center. He may have as many colorful inflections on the word “cunt” as the eskimo have words for “snow,” but Goldstein’s profane tough-guy schtick masks a character type that’s deeply conventional. 

The Goldstein formula carries over to Office Romance, a ho-hum Netflix rom-com that he’s co-written (with Joe Kelly) as a vehicle for Jennifer Lopez and an opportunity to do the Roy Kent thing in a modified context. That explains how a film that’s plotted mostly by-the-numbers is spiked by dialogue and situations that are bracingly explicit. Though much of the action occurs in a workplace so buttoned-down that the company has a zero-tolerance policy on office relationships, the conversation often slips into schoolyard vulgarity, like a secretary describing the state of her undergarments to her boss or the CEO’s right-hand woman likening a corporate lawsuit to a weakening erection. It makes for lively dialogue to be sure, but the contrast between its surface saltiness and bland interior feels conspicuously like the Goldstein touch. 

Once a high-powered British attorney, Daniel Branchflower (Goldstein) has taken a job in the legal department of Air Cruz, a mid-level airline whose CEO, Jackie Cruz (Lopez) is embroiled in a lawsuit with a larger carrier. After the company’s lead attorney (Bradley Whitford) nearly chokes to death on a breakfast burrito, Daniel takes his place capably on a deposition, which impresses Jackie, who maintains a tough reputation around the office. There’s immediate chemistry between the two—in a Goldstein moment, Daniel inadvertently pops a boner while shaking her hand—but the restrictions on office relationships are initially hard to overcome. Jackie’s father (Edward James Olmos) is the airline’s founder and her sterling record as CEO hasn’t quelled the lingering skepticism of the board over her leadership. 

Goldstein and Lopez have a pleasing-enough chemistry together, and the filthiness of the dialogue gives the film an edge that rom-coms of this kind don’t usually have, allowing ringers like Betty Gilpin and Amy Sedaris some room to pop off. But in rooting for this relationship, Office Romance is also curiously retrograde about business culture, suggesting that it’s silly to put any kind of restrictions on a professional work environment and that it’s also silly to question whether the founder’s child is the right person to run a company. Plenty of movies and TV shows have been made recently about the icky dynamics of the boss sleeping with a subordinate (e.g. Babygirl) or powerful nepobabies (e.g. Succession), but this film takes an anything-goes attitude that feels ill-considered. It’s the sort of rom-com fantasy where the gravity of the real world doesn’t apply. — Scott Tobias

Office Romance is currently streaming on Netflix. File your complaints with HR.