REVIEW: Your Place or Mine is Less About the Romance and More About the Friendships
With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, Netflix is gearing up to get you in the Holiday spirit with its new romantic comedy, Your Place or Mine. Starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, we find best friends, Debbie (Witherspoon) and Peter (Kutcher) living on two different coasts. Type A Debbie is in Los Angeles with her son, Jack (Wesley Kimmel) while easy going Peter is in New York City. Set to take a class in NYC, Debbie is hesitant about leaving her son behind, but excited to finally see Peter again. However, when babysitting plans change, Debbie believes she is no longer able to get her much needed week-long break. But, ever the best friend, Peter offers to come to Los Angeles to watch Jack, so Debbie can have her week. With the new plans underway, Debbie and Peter switch places and basically begin to live each other’s lives. As the week progresses, the two friends find their apparent platonic feelings becoming something more, but the question remains, will they act on those feelings or just continue to push them aside?
Written and directed by Aline Brosh McKenna, most of the movie is pretty good. The story is fun, and the characters are pretty great. Our two leads relationship is mainly built on Facetime calls, regular phone calls, and ZOOM. It feels extremely modern with how much the two rely on technology to keep their relationship in take. Still, this doesn’t exactly fair well in a rom-com movie. For a rom-com to really work, the two leads need to have physical chemistry and the story doesn’t utilize that feature enough. We barely get to see the two leads physically in scenes together so the chemistry needed to make this a great rom-com wasn’t there. What was there was great relationship building between the leads and the secondary characters. Debbie’s relationship with Peter’s ex-girlfriend, Minka (Zoe Chao) was one of the highlights in the movie. Minka is a down to earth, no nonsense character who acts as a voice for the audience. The other relationship that was a highlight was Peter’s relationship with Jack. Both Kutcher and Kimmel played extremely well off each other. At no point did you feel as if their story was forced or that Peter couldn’t become the potential father figure for Jack.
Witherspoon and Kutcher are not newcomers to the rom-com game, but this movie doesn’t do them justice. Separately, they were a joy to watch, but together the chemistry wasn’t there. Chao stole every scene she was in while Jesse Williams (Theo) was everything you would want from a character that could potentially throw a wrench in the Peter/Debbie relationship. Witherspoon and Kutcher are what will bring you to watching the movie, but Chao and Williams are what will keep you around until the end.
Your Place or Mine is an enjoyable story, but if you are looking for a true romantic comedy this is not it. This movie is all about the friendships and not so much about the romance. This is the movie that you put on if you are looking for something fun to watch to take you away from the real world.
Grade: B+