| I was not expecting Hallmark to make a clear and definitive anti-AI pro-artists statement with this movie, but here we are. Return to Office with such a cheesy title and a premise that could go wrong quickly continually surprises with how many things they get right. The first thing to get right is the casting. I love and will love Scott Michael Foster in anything and joining him is Janel Parrish who plays a somewhat uptight career woman but is increasingly more interesting. | | 2025
Directed by: Peter Benson
Screenplay by: Steven J. Kung
Starring: Janel Parrish, Scott Michael Foster
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Liv (Janel Parrish) is a Director of Corporate Strategy at a big tech firm which just acquired an artists’ owned and run social media company. There’s a lot of meaningless big company lingo thrown around at the beginning. While it initially sounds like writers who didn’t do their homework and never stepped foot in an office, it’s actually about making fun of companies like that and still giving characters like Liv their own respect since she has spent years working for this company and trying to get promoted within it.
Meanwhile with the company has instituted a new back to the office policy but with more people than there are desks, so our two leads Liv and Tom (Scott Michael Foster) are sharing a desk, unknown to each other. What really works about the first half of this film is it actually gives the lead pairing three different ways to connect with one another. First, as anonymous desk buddies, they share short, sweet, and flirtatious notes back and forth, unaware of who sits there on the other days, sharing small details about their life. Second, Liv and Tom are working closely together, so even though they don’t know they share a desk, they do spend most of their time sharing work ideas. And, third, a favourite part of mine, Tom and Liv share a part of their lives outside the office – Liv volunteers at a seniors’ community center which Tom’s mother participates in and the mothers get to meddle in their love lives. This gives the duo multiple opportunities to connect and get to know each other, making the romance undeniable by the time we get there.
A common trope with this type of anonymous love matching in the premise (You’ve Got Mail as a famous example), is that the pair hate each other. That is nicely sidestepped here after some brief initial animosity, Liv and Tom quickly start seeing how much they have in common creatively by working with each other. The anonymous part ends up playing for much longer than seemed reasonable, but it ultimately works.
There aren’t a whole lot of obstacles in Return to Office, so the romance is relatively drama-free and an easy watch. The obstacle is the big bad tech, but again, I am so impressed that Hallmark took an unambiguous stand against AI, and it just makes rooting for the lead couple that much easier.
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