Benjamin Lee

What most most enlivens the film is how the horror of the predicament exposes the cracks in the central friendship. Dictating social plans above water becomes insisting dominance over life-or-death decisions in the caves and while the writing could afford to be far spikier and more consistent (Max is both in charge of every detail yet confesses that she is allergic to logistics), it adds extra gristle to the finale.

There’s just not enough natural, easy charm and the star, like many maturing child actors before her, can’t figure out how big or small to go with her adult reactions, making something buoyant and breezy look far too much like hard work.

I found a few moments here lightly amusing . . . but it’s largely, disappointingly short on real laughs, a panicked maximalism to its bawdiness replacing anything more smart and thought through.

In trying to scratch our itch for the old while also recognising the new, McKendrick settles for something stale.

For a slow – and often ponderously uneventful – film, the ending also feels strangely rushed, decisions and reveals not explored enough for them to really land in the way that’s clearly intended (there’s a potentially more satisfying psychological thriller using the same ingredients). There’s really impressive craft here though.

The romcom is a genre I will forever root for, despite it being stuck in a cruelly long flop era, and while Office Romance does have a tad more gloss than Netflix’s many junkier alternatives, the magic is still missing. Like the office at its centre, it’s too sleek and corporate to melt us – all work and no play

You can feel the struggle of trying to cram everything in and even at an unforgivably bloated 143 minutes, it’s both busy and hollow.

Its scope might be small but I found its emotional impact to be surprisingly big.

For a film so unashamedly silly, it’s also incredibly, tiresomely un-fun and, by the end, laughably earnest, as if we should all be learning a very important lesson.

The only mildly jolting sequence is the cold open, setting up a previous haunting with two friends, something the marketing team was clearly aware of, having essentially shown it in full in the first teaser trailer. It’s downhill from there, as we’re stuck with an anonymously written couple we struggle to root for as they face off with an antagonist we struggle to understand.