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“Your Place or Mine” begins in 2003, and it feels like the kind of superficially agreeable and instantly forgettable romantic comedy that came out around that time.

These are the movies that have found new life in heavy rotation on the monitors at DryBar: “ How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days ,” “The Holiday,” and “ Something’s Gotta Give .” You can watch them absent-mindedly while getting a blowout and sipping a complementary glass of champagne in preparation for a girls’ night out.

“Your Place or Mine” marks the feature directing debut of longtime writer Aline Brosh McKenna , whose many credits include “27 Dresses,” another aughts rom-com staple. McKenna also wrote the far superior Oscar nominee “ The Devil Wears Prada .” Her latest film never comes close to reaching those heights in terms of sharp dialogue or richly drawn characters, but it also isn’t aiming that high. Rather, “Your Place or Mine” seems content with being pleasant, and maybe that’s sufficient for a lazy Saturday Netflix watch.

Trouble is, we know the film’s stars are capable of so much more. Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher are, of course, great-looking and charismatic, and both have perfectly snappy comic timing after all these years. So it’s frustrating watching them try to take this safe, bland material and make it sing.

Witherspoon and Kutcher play Debbie and Peter, who hooked up once 20 years ago and have been best friends ever since. We know they’re best friends because they keep telling us they’re best friends, but their exchanges never convey the comfort or substance of such a crucial, two-decade bond. Even though they live across the country from each other, they still talk every day in some form, and while their conversations are breezy, they lack a believable spark.

McKenna quickly establishes that they’re opposites through the use of familiar genre tropes. Split screens show that Debbie lives in a cluttered and colorful Los Angeles Craftsman while Peter lives in a sleek and spacious Brooklyn condo overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. (The backgrounds are extremely green-screeny.) She’s a perky and uptight single mom; he’s a sardonic charmer with commitment issues. She walks through a quiet, leafy neighborhood while he walks through the bustling city streets. They’re so different! Could they possibly end up together?

McKenna’s script keeps them physically apart for the vast majority of the movie, though, as a series of contrivances forces them to swap homes for a week. Debbie moves into Peter’s place while finishing some professional training in Manhattan; meanwhile, Peter agrees to live in Debbie’s home to take care of her sweet and shy 13-year-old son, Jack ( Wesley Kimmel ). He arrives to a litany of anxious Post-It notes all over everything, and she can’t figure out how to get his high-tech entertainment system to stop playing songs by Peter’s favorite band, The Cars. It's wacky! (Seriously, name a Cars song, and it’s in this movie, including “ Drive ” while Peter is ... driving.)

Each location features a wise-cracking sidekick who’s much more compelling than the main character. Peter gets to hang out with Debbie’s middle school co-worker pal, played by a delightfully dry Tig Notaro . Debbie improbably becomes instant BFFs with Peter’s preening party girl ex-girlfriend, played by Zoe Chao . Her snarky, sly delivery is enjoyable, but this character apparently has no life outside of showing up and being supportive of a woman she just met.

Other wedged-in supporting figures include Steve Zahn as Debbie’s gardener and the would-be suitor who’s so laid-back, his name is actually Zen, and Jesse Williams as a handsome and accomplished New York book editor with whom she enjoys a flirtation. Both feel like afterthoughts and underdeveloped obstacles.

Will Debbie let loose in New York? Will Peter find stability in Los Angeles? And will each find in the other a love that was there all along? Aside from a brief, forced fight because there has to be some kind of conflict, the answers to these questions are obvious. There’s nothing complicated about these people or these scenarios that would throw their destinies in doubt. The journey is always more important than the destination when it comes to romantic comedies, but there’s barely a twist or detour or even a pothole in the road to make this trip more interesting.

On Netflix today.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film Credits

Your Place or Mine (2023)

Rated PG-13

109 minutes

Reese Witherspoon as Debbie

Ashton Kutcher as Peter

Jesse Williams as Theo

Steve Zahn as Zen

Wesley Kimmel as Jack

Griffin Matthews as John Golden

Rachel Bloom as Scarlet

Aline Brosh McKenna

Cinematographer

Florian Ballhaus
Chris A. Peterson

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‘Your Place or Mine’ Review: Try Neither

This humdrum Netflix romantic comedy features Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher as longtime friends with possibly hidden feelings for each other.

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In a film scene, Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher lie in bed together, smiling at each other.

By Amy Nicholson

Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher and the screenwriter (and first-time director) Aline Brosh McKenna each have decades of experience making hit romantic comedies. So it’s all the more confounding that their latest, “Your Place or Mine,” is as phony and flat as a store-bought valentine forced on every kid in class. Witherspoon and Kutcher play Debbie and Peter, longtime chums who shared a sole night of passion 20 years ago before settling into a bicoastal best friendship. Why haven’t these codependent singletons gotten back together? “She’s … her and I’m … me ?” he sputters. His answer sums up the hard thinking that went into this script.

An opening flashback to Debbie and Peter’s previous hookup is the film’s comedic peak. Brosh McKenna points out the onscreen 2003 signifiers: trucker hats, flat-ironed hair and enough layered shirts to turn Witherspoon into a matryoshka doll. There’s also, of course, Witherspoon and Kutcher themselves, who spent that year shooting separate rom-coms, hers with Luke Wilson and his with Tara Reid and Brittany Murphy. Past the intro, they’re kept apart here, too. Instead, their characters swap homes, forcing the two stars to squander their breezy familiarity with each other on separate sides of phone conversations and split-screen bubble baths.

This Netflix production is banking on nostalgic good will for curiosity clicks. People puttering in and out of the room folding laundry can rest easy that there are few crucial plot points to miss — and the ones that exist tend to get repeated at least twice.

Peter, for example, is a Manhattan marketing consultant with commitment problems. Early on, he breaks up with his latest girlfriend at the six-month mark; in his next scene, he has a near-identical conversation with his latest corporate clients. (The clients take it harder.) Debbie, a risk-averse single mother in Los Angeles, is pilloried with advice from one friend (Tig Notaro) — “Get your degree, find a man, then come home and redo your kitchen” — and escapes only to immediately collide with a second pesky pal (Rachel Bloom), who tacks on that the self-sacrificial parent should also pursue her dream job as a book editor.

The pacing of these scenes feels as though we’re trapped in a spaceship airlock and can only faintly remember what natural life felt like back home on Earth. It only takes a squint to see that Debbie’s adorable foibles — rules scribbled on Post-it notes stuck all over the house, an insistence that her overprotected 13-year-old son (Wesley Kimmel) is allergic to everything from grass to fun — would, in reality, demand an intervention and, perhaps, a diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy. But no one in this movie is playing anything near a human being, although Kutcher occasionally resembles one when he lowers his head, crinkles his eyes and chuckles.

The movie’s sincerity can be measured by how flippantly it disposes of its love rivals. Steve Zahn suffers the most indignities as a tech millionaire who retired to garden Debbie’s yard pro bono, while Jesse Williams’s charming literary publisher never gets a chance to put up a fair fight. As for Minka (Zoë Chao), Peter’s ex, a marvelously droll narcissist somehow willing to drop her whole big-city life to help a stranger get her groove back, she may not win the guy, but she steals all of her scenes.

Your Place or Mine Rated PG-13 for strong language and suggestive material. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

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Your place or mine, common sense media reviewers.

Cast is draw in likable romcom; language, sexual situations.

Your Place or Mine Poster: Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher are lying down and looking dreamy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Be truthful with your feelings; don't waste time w

Debbie is a dedicated mom and avid reader who has

Secondary characters who play important roles in t

A boy is knocked down in hockey and winds up in th

Adults kiss and sleep together. No private parts o

"F--k," "s--t," "ass," "a--hole," "damn," "hell,"

Notable or mentioned brands include Uber, Porsche,

Adults drink beer, wine, and champagne. There's me

Positive Messages

Be truthful with your feelings; don't waste time worrying about results. Being practical is important but can also mean putting your dreams on hold. Find balance in life. Don't always "play it safe." Kids need to be allowed to make mistakes and get hurt in order to learn confidence and resilience.

Positive Role Models

Debbie is a dedicated mom and avid reader who has put her own interests and love life on hold to raise her son. Her best friend, Peter, is successful in business but can't keep a relationship going for more than six months.

Diverse Representations

Secondary characters who play important roles in the main characters' lives -- as friends, colleagues, or love interests -- are Asian American, Black, and gay.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

A boy is knocked down in hockey and winds up in the hospital with concussion symptoms. A man talks about his father's death that happened when he was 13.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Adults kiss and sleep together. No private parts or sexual activity is shown behind kissing, men carrying women to the bedroom, lying on top of each other, and taking off layers of clothing. A woman is seen in her bra and a man goes to bed (alone) in his underwear. Some sexual innuendo in conversations, as well as discussion of waxing. A man calls a woman "hot" and says he enjoys a "friends with benefits" relationship with her. A man's butt crack shows when he works in the garden. A woman shows up at a man's apartment in a long sweater with nothing underneath.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k," "s--t," "ass," "a--hole," "damn," "hell," "butt crack," "butthole," "screw that," "jerk," "idiot," "weird," "dumb," "oh God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Notable or mentioned brands include Uber, Porsche, Airbnb, Wonderbra, Mac, iPhone, Instagram, TikTok, SimpliSafe, Zoom, Prada, Peloton, Old Navy, Powell's Books, Strand Books.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults drink beer, wine, and champagne. There's mention of a bong fire, a man going to rehab two times, a dad who died "drunk in a ditch," a "drunk mother," someone being a "boozer," and vaping (in song lyrics).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Your Place or Mine is a romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher . Adults kiss and are seen lying together in bed, but there's no explicit nudity or sexual activity. Couples do strip off layers of clothing and lie on top of each other, and a woman is seen in her bra while a man goes to bed (alone) in his underwear. Adults also drink beer, wine, and champagne, and one of the main characters has been to rehab twice. There's mention of drunk parents and a "bong fire." A boy is knocked down while playing hockey and winds up in the hospital with concussion symptoms. Themes revolve around middle-aged adults rediscovering youthful passions and getting back to their original life plans after practical jobs, lost loves, substance abuse, and/or parenting have taken them down different paths. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "damn," "hell," "butt crack," "screw that," "jerk," and more. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In YOUR PLACE OR MINE, Debbie ( Reese Witherspoon ) and Peter ( Ashton Kutcher ) have been best friends for the last 20 years. That was when the two slept together and then went their separate ways. Now Debbie lives in Los Angeles and dedicates her life to her overprotected 13-year-old son, Jack (Wesley Kimmel, nephew of Jimmy Kimmel ). Peter is a financially successful businessman in New York City who can't seem to form any lasting romantic or even platonic relationships beyond his friendship with Debbie. And the two talk on the phone every day. When Debbie needs a babysitter so she can complete an accounting course in New York, Peter offers himself. He and Jack bond for the week in LA, while Debbie rediscovers her own long-ignored passion for the editing world in New York. Will the two realize they want more than friendship while they're away?

Is It Any Good?

You know the lead characters will get together, but the road to happily-ever-after in this romantic comedy is less predictable than you might suspect from the trailer. Your Place or Mine (a title that also doesn't do the story justice) certainly follows the formula -- from meet-cute to separation to realization to togetherness. But more interesting is what happens along the way, as a lonely businessman bonds with a stifled teen boy and a sensible single mom takes a pause and rediscovers her own goals and desires. The settings -- colorful California and elegant New York City -- are also attractive.

Witherspoon and Kutcher have been scripted a good mix of comedic and more earnest situations to act out, and they're bolstered by a great supporting cast. The deadpan Tig Notaro plays the straight-talking LA friend, and a droll Zoe Chao is the overly confident (and overly convenient) millennial sidekick in NYC. Steve Zahn appears in a goofy role that feels like something we've seen from him before, and Jesse Williams is memorable as Debbie's aspirational love interest. There are some funny lines about Debbie's "Saran Wrap parenting" and "Gen-X earth mama" style and involving Peter's attempts to "rebrand" the unpopular Jack. The result is an unsurprising but agreeable romantic comedy whose cast is likely to prove the main draw.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why Peter and Debbie aren't together as a couple but have remained best friends in Your Place or Mine . Does the premise seem realistic? Why, or why not?

What are some formulaic aspects of romantic comedies seen in this film? Did any of the story or the characters' actions surprise you?

The film's opening makes use of split screens and hand-drawn titling on images to set up what happened in the past and where the main characters are today. What did you think of this introduction? Would you have liked more of this in the movie? Why, or why not?

What's the appeal of romantic comedies? Why do you think they remain so popular?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : February 10, 2023
Cast : Reese Witherspoon , Ashton Kutcher , Zoe Chao
Director : Aline Brosh McKenna
Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Asian actors, Female writers
Studio : Netflix
Genre : Romance
Topics : Friendship
Run time : 111 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : suggestive material and brief strong language
Last updated : March 4, 2023

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‘Your Place or Mine’ Review: As Best Friends (Wink, Wink), Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher Get Stuck in Chintzy Rom-Com Hell

Aline Brosh McKenna's film is "When Harry Met Sally" meets "The Holiday" meets a cookie cutter.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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For the week, she and Peter will trade apartments. In other words, the film’s writer-director, Aline Brosh McKenna (who’s best known for scripting “The Devil Wears Prada”), felt free to spin the premise of Nancy Meyers’ “The Holiday” as if that movie were an ancient classic. “Your Place or Mine” is “When Harry Met Sally” meets “The Holiday” meets a dozen surrogate-dad-bonding-with-the-kid comedies meets a cookie cutter.

Most rom-coms have a love montage. “Your Place or Mine” has a Debbie-reading-Peter’s-novel montage: She reads it at night, as she’s dressing in the morning, and in the middle of her accounting class (where she can’t stop grinning with delight at it). After finishing the last page, she actually puts her hand on her heart, shakes her head in awed disbelief and stage whispers “Wow!” Is this a parody? Debbie then takes the manuscript to Theo (Jesse Williams), the head of a boutique book publisher she happens to have just met (that’s how stuff happen in this movie: by convenience), and he compares the book to Jonathan Franzen. He’s also a sexy catch the movie teases us into thinking might be Debbie’s Mr. Right.

“Your Place or Mine” is an outrageously benign movie, which may not sound like much of a criticism. But it’s so benign it’s innocuous. There’s no tension, no comedy with any bite (except for the dry one-liners of Tig Notaro as the best friend who’s there to give advice), no romantic friction. Jesse Williams, as the book-publishing maestro, is stranded without repartee, and Kutcher doesn’t quite make Peter a character. He’s polite, self-regarding, and slightly grandiose, as if he were running a seminar. As for Witherspoon, she’s forced to play Debbie in a way that’s so compulsively other-directed that the actor’s perkiness starts to seem like masochism.

So many things in the movie are just…off in their overly telegraphed way. Like Jack the nerd, with his long hair parted down the middle, going right out onto the ice and scoring a goal. Or the way Theo’s Duncan Press is located in a wooden-interior brownstone in Gramercy Park, with virtually no employees, like someone’s 1978 fantasy of what an indie publishing house looks like. Or the nonstop needle drops of songs by the Cars, who Peter is obsessed with, because they’re the trigger by which he remembers his late dad, but the movie so overstates this that they’re literally the only band he listens to. Or Steve Zahn as a spaced-out-gardener named Zen.

There is finally a moment of dramatic clash. It happens at an airport, on automatic walkways going in opposite directions. All the little plot-point secrets that the movie has already spelled out for us get spelled out even more by Debbie and Peter. And still, this romantic climax plays like an episode of couples’ therapy. In what may be the film’s most flabbergasting moment, Debbie and Theo have a conversation about how they both love Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth,” and they banter about the novel — arguably the most devastating ever written — as if it were a rom-com with a tearjerker ending. In “Your Place or Mine,” the whole world is a rom-com. We just live in it and cringe through it.

Reviewed online, Feb. 8, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 111 MIN.

Production: A Netflix release of an Aggregate Films, Hello Sunshine production. Producers: Jason Bateman, Aline Brosh McKenna, Michael Costigan, Reese Witherspoon. Executive producer: Merri D. Howard.
Crew: Director, screenplay: Aline Brosh McKenna. Camera: Florian Ballhaus. Editor: Chris A. Peterson. Music: Siddhartha Khosla.
With: Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher, Wesley Kimmel, Jesse Williams, Tig Notaro, Steve Zahn, Rachel Bloom.

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‘your place or mine’ review: reese witherspoon and ashton kutcher help revive the rom-com.

'27 Dresses' and 'The Devil Wears Prada' writer Aline Brosh McKenna pens and directs Netflix's romantic comedy about two long-distance best friends who trade lives for a week.

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Your Place or Mine (2023)

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Your Place or Mine review – Netflix romcom has big stars but little charm

Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher play best friends who swap houses for a week in a bland, if inoffensive, pile of fluff

V alentine’s Day compels many of us to bemoan not just the sorry state of our love lives but also the even sorrier state of the romantic comedy, a genre given a recent rebirth that’s still in need of a jolt back to life. After a distinct dearth, the streamer-led avalanche of 90-minute meet-cutes has certainly been consistent but it’s also been consistently underwhelming, inoffensively so perhaps but also increasingly aggravating to those of us who fondly remember the best of them. Even without expecting a total wheel reinvention, there’s a laziness that niggles – it’s as if these movies are being pumped out by writers and directors who are half-asleep, their focus elsewhere.

One might naively expect a little more from Reese Witherspoon’s return to both the genre and to film in general, her first leading role in six years since another romantic comedy, Home Again. But Netflix’s maddeningly milquetoast Your Place or Mine, which pairs her with Ashton Kutcher, is just about as forgettable as most of the mulch we’ve been spoon-fed of late but considerably more disappointing given both the involvement of Witherspoon and writer-director Aline Brosh McKenna. While McKenna did lump us with both I Don’t Know How She Does It and the remake of Annie, she also wrote the smart and charming scripts for 27 Dresses, The Devil Wears Prada and the frustratingly under-seen Morning Glory and co-created the excellent and often daringly subversive Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It’s rather baffling then that she would make this her directorial debut, something so edgeless and unspecific with only glimpses of the wit and warmth we’ve seen from her work before.

The plot strings together familiar elements from romcoms past: the best friends who might actually be soulmates in disguise from When Harry Met Sally, the big star pairing who only spend one scene together throughout the movie from Sleepless in Seattle and the house swap from The Holiday, a not uninteresting pot of ingredients to be stirred but one that remains stuck at room temperature until the end. An early red flag lands before we’ve seen a thing: the Gwen Stefani and Akon song The Great Escape leads an opening scene from 2003, one that’s littered with bits of on-screen text telling us just how very 2003 it all is (trucker hat – check) as Witherspoon and Kutcher’s characters have a drunken one-night stand. Not only was The Great Escape released three years later but this gimmicky flourish is then abandoned until the very end. Coupled with a rushed intro that doesn’t show us enough of the characters’ initial dynamic, the film starts off at a place of concerning sloppiness.

We’re soon in the present with Witherspoon’s uptight single mother living in LA and her hookup turned bestie, Kutcher’s caddish man about town, in Brooklyn. The film then sees them staying in each other’s homes for a week – her so she can complete a college course and him so he can look after her son – and realising that, no prizes for guessing this one, that maybe they should be living in the same city.

It seemed for a brief period that Witherspoon, after years of coasting with plane movies, had finally returned to Earth. Her early work had shown a daring young actor who operated without fear and constraint, pushing herself and us as an audience with dark and demanding films like Freeway, Election, American Psycho, Best Laid Plans and Pleasantville. The deserved success of 2001’s delightful crowd-pleaser Legally Blonde slowly trapped her in cutesy mode, cast as America’s sweetheart, defanged and without real challenge. It was 2014’s adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild that pulled her back from the brink, a barnstorming reminder of what she can and is willing to do, leading to a small role in Inherent Vice and the knotty domestic thrills of Big Little Lies. It was short-lived though, with most of her time now devoted to Apple’s laughably awful hate-watch The Morning Show. Your Place or Mine serving as her big-screen return is another blow, the kind of forgettable fluff she would have led a decade or so ago.

Not only is it frustrating to see her specifically stuck in neurotic helicopter mum mode yet again (especially when it’s written without any real texture or detail) but also to see the film sticking to the most boringly gendered stereotypes imaginable. She likes to cook! He likes to womanise! A far more interesting version would have seen the roles reversed, him as the clingy dad and her as the commitment-phobe. There are brief flashes of something more interesting in general, and adult, at play here – Kutcher’s playboy is a recovering alcoholic, Witherspoon’s mother was a heavy drinker, their friendship has been tested in difficult ways – suggestions that perhaps the script was a little bit more emotionally complex at one point. But it’s all been sanded down to nothing and what could have felt at least loosely grounded quickly turns into silly cartoon with two bland and mostly unimpeachable leads supported by absurd one-note characters played to the hilt by Zoe Chao and Steve Zahn as if they were in a kids’ movie. Even as glossy run-of-the-mill formula, it’s never even close to being as funny or romantic as it needs to be, devoid of fizzy one-liners and hampered by the pair struggling to muster up chemistry during phone conversations that never feel as lived-in as they would for friends with such extensive history.

For a film being pushed as this year’s big Valentine’s watch, Your Place or Mine is as half-hearted as they come.

Your Place or Mine is available on Netflix on 10 February

Reese Witherspoon
Ashton Kutcher
Romance films
Comedy films

‘Your Place or Mine’ Review: Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon’s Digital Romance Is a Missed Connection

‘Your Place or Mine’ is a modern romance set in the digital era that finds its signals dropping more than once between its two leads.

If Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers movies are the standards for our romantic comedy joys, the last few years have proven that genre writers need to desperately step up their game. As studios try their hardest to revive the rom-com and return it to a more nuanced, natural atmosphere, it’s no secret these movies are hanging on for dear life. Despite star power fueling many films across the genre since the early aughts, a lot of them don’t make the cut, much like Netflix’s Your Place or Mine with Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon . In an attempt to feel like a social media version of When Harry Met Sally... that finds the two hooking up but deciding to stay friends, the Netflix comedy has no real excuse for being a dull, laugh-free feature boasting a genuinely great cast.

In the directorial debut of screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna ( The Devil Wears Prada , My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend ), Your Place or Mine follows two best friends, Debbie (Witherspoon) and Peter (Kutcher), who met in the early 2000s after playing poker one night. Hitting it off from the get-go and offering audiences a glimpse of the cringe-worthy timeline with Pop-Up Video -type labels across the screen, the two clearly show to the audience they have palpable chemistry, as they are unable to get their hands off each other. But as it’s just a lot of making out and Debbie peeling back her multi-layered tops while Peter is in his earring phase, something feels incredibly out of place between the two, and it’s almost as if the chemistry is being forced.

Fast-forward to 20 years later and the pair are just best friends, staying connected through digital technology with FaceTime and “good morning” texts. Debbie is a single mom to 13-year-old Jack ( Wesley Kimmel ), whom she shares with a never seen on-screen, ex-husband named Jimmy. Meanwhile, Peter is just bad at relationships while keeping busy in his brand consultant job. In the first 10 minutes, he even proves this after talking to his girlfriend ( Vella Lovell ), who breaks up with him after he can’t define their relationship. It’s at this moment that the film devolves into a super formulaic assumption and plays to the trope of “the guy who is terrible at relationships is only this way because he’s in love with his best friend.”

RELATED: 'Your Place or Mine': Release Date, Cast, and Everything We Know So Far

As we learn more about their routines, we realize Debbie is a creature of habit with her son in Los Angeles, whereas Peter thrives on change and minimalism in New York — a backdrop used to highlight their very opposite natures. Debbie is somehow unable to get any of her friends or family to care for her son as she plans for some east coast travel to complete her studies. Recognizing how important her studies are to her, Peter decides to look after Jack and swaps places with Debbie a la The Holiday . With the pair switching it up for a week, it’s in this dynamic apart from each other that they learn how what they think they want, might not actually be what they need.

While Kutcher and Witherspoon might be synonymous with romantic comedies in their own respects and are a dream pair for the big screen, it’s disappointing to see their connection falling short and not clicking in the scenes they share. Much of their interactions are filmed in split-screen mode with Debbie and Peter conversing over FaceTime or telephone, but that shouldn’t be an excuse for these A-list stars who have shown audiences more depth with co-stars in other projects. The lack of chemistry between Kutcher and Witherspoon is incredibly loud and doesn’t feel one bit natural.

This could be blamed either on the direction or the sheer fact that the split-screen techniques utilized were ineffective tools for creating a more inclusive dynamic for Peter and Debbie, further creating relationship challenges for the actors. Adding to the upset, the characters just don’t feel fleshed out enough and at times, lacking any reason why the audience should care about them.

But while the two leads suffer from a lack of sparks, the interactions they each share with their co-stars in scenes work quite well. Kutcher and Witherspoon are supported by an incredible cast including Tig Notaro , who plays the pair’s mutual best friend Alicia, a mom of two and Jack’s teacher. Playing her part most thoughtfully and with a particularly dry, sharpness, Notaro, along with her cast mates, proves the stars are not an issue in this film — it’s the story. Take, for example, Steve Zahn as the kooky Zen neighbor of Debbie that constantly maintains her garden. While playing the usual twang of roles he is loved for from his catalog, he still brings immense joy to the film and is always fun to watch. The same goes for Zoe Chao , who is exceptional in everything she does and plays one of Peter’s ex-girlfriends who befriends Debbie while in New York.

Even young Wesley Kimmel, the nephew of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel , playing the hockey-loving yet “allergic to everything” son of Debbie, does a stellar job of being a kid who wants a bit of normalcy in his life. Topped off with Jesse Williams playing the dreamy love interest of Debbie, the Grey’s Anatomy alum plays the dream boat role down to a tee and brings a ton of sparks to his dynamic with Witherspoon for a blossoming relationship that looks legit.

Though Witherspoon and Kutcher each bring charisma and charm to their scenes and make this all the more watchable thanks to their magnetism, Your Place or Mine is a sad waste of their talents. Witherspoon is, as always, a delight on screen and plays the cute, quirky character unaware of her best friend’s affections most amicably. Kutcher has an alluring charm to him that works well, and while he shies away from one-dimensional characterization as Peter, he falls right back into it by the end—which is more the story's fault than his own.

Your Place or Mine has a decent premise with a great cast and is fun at times with moments that are sweet and showcase great potential for an enjoyable rom-com, but it never hits the mark and only works in pieces. Conflated with pacing issues and a tepid kind of humor that generates mild laughs and scoffs, the movie is formulaic and is sadly missing the emotional depth to make it a memorable watch. From the get-go, the film works hard to be likable as it progresses through a relatable digital medium, but it’s hard to tell what the movie wants to be as it dips into a terminal case of predictability and keeps disconnecting.

Rating : C-

Your Place or Mine comes to Netflix on February 10.

Home » Movies » Movie Reviews

Your Place or Mine review – a romantic-comedy with an infectious charm

Directed by Aline Brosh McKenna, we review the 2023 Netflix film Your Place or Mine, which does not contain spoilers.

This is a week of romantic comedies at Ready Steady Cut. Every streaming service is premiering one, and yours truly covers four of them. You know, the kind that leaves logic at the door, with scripts overdosing on sentimentality. Movies that will make you appreciate what you have and long for what you don’t. The Netflix entry, Your Place or Mine , has an awful title. However, this rom-com can be charming, mildly funny, and surprisingly sweet.

Your Place or Mine (2023) Review and Plot Summary

The story follows two friends who reflect on and celebrate 20 years of friendship. Debbie ( Reese Witherspoon ) and Peter ( Ashton Kutcher ) are best friends. Their relationship started dating, and deciding to be opposites; they would be better off as friends. This being a romantic comedy, one would think an attractive pair with such a friendship, along with the rule that opposites attract, would make a great couple. Peter is aggressive, a wealthy and hip brand consultant. He left his dreams of wanting to be a writer decades ago for a rich and ambitious lifestyle. In comparison, Debbie abandoned her dreams as a writer for the safe choice of being an accountant. In Peter’s eyes, she takes very few risks professionally. Even personally.

Debbie has a thirteen-year-old son Jack ( Wesley Kimmel ). Her actress friend Scarlet ( Rachel Bloom ) lands a part in a film, so she cannot watch Debbie’s son during a scheduled visit to New York City. For some odd reason, Debbie has a gardener ( Steve Zahn ) who used to own her house. He has never left, and the man simply won’t stop pruning. (Yes, we are wondering why the man cannot watch Jack too). So Peter volunteers. Their planes (probably) pass each other, and they swap homes for a week, where Peter tries to be a father to Jack. In contrast, Debbie meets a dashing book publisher ( Jesse Williams ). There is an immediate attraction. And they eye f**k each while talking over the list of books that he’s put out in the world.

Written and directed by Aline Brosh McKenna ( The Devil Wears Prada ), her film is more interesting and excels when the script focuses on the leads interacting with supporting characters. In particular, one of Peter’s exes ( Zoe Chao ) shows up half-naked under a coat while Deb house sits in his beautiful New York apartment (with the most fantastic view you’ll ever see). Chao is very funny, making Deb her project and pushing her out of her comfort zone. Then you have Deb’s friend, a school mom ( Tig Notaro ), who delivers her dry sense of humor as Peter attempts to be father Jack. The young man needs a father, and Peter encourages Jack to try new things, like making friends and going out for the hockey team.

What you have here with McKenna’s film is About a Boy meets You’ve Got Mail . Peter is looking to find more meaning in his life by being a father figure to Jack. Then Deb, a lover of literature, is swooned by William’s book publisher Theo . The rom-com avoids the genre pitfalls of will they or won’t they for 90 minutes with the constant interaction that can make a film feel endlessly long. Here, the viewer enjoys both stories that gently fold in hints and backstory clues on each lead character pining for each other.

READ: Best Romance Movies on Netflix in 2023

There are some common sense questions. It would be normal for anyone to be weary of a friend who has relapsed twice with drugs and alcohol to watch over their kids without worry. The romance between Debbie and Theo has some actual heat to it, and their storyline could have been its feature film. So, there’s the danger some viewers may feel they are suitable for each other, which will ruin the payoff. And frankly, Peter keeps items hidden around his immaculately cleaned apartment, equipped with an inside-the-home surveillance system, inside large brown clasp envelopes like a serial killer hiding mementos. But we can ignore that because if Witherspoon vouches for him, and the guy looks like Ashton Kutcher, he must be great, right?

Is Your Place or Mine good?

Your Place or Mine has a rushed ending that doesn’t do the film any favors. However, the lead performances are charming. There are some genuine laughs from the cast, particularly the infectious Zao Choe. This romantic comedy will appeal strictly to fans of the genre and/or Witherspoon and Kutcher’s star power. While I was initially on the fence about McKenna’s film because the ending needed a rewrite, there is enough here to offer a mild recommendation.

What did you think of the 2023 Netflix film Your Place or Mine ? Comment below.

Article by Marc Miller

Marc Miller (also known as M.N. Miller) joined Ready Steady Cut in April 2018 as a Film and TV Critic, publishing over 1,600 articles on the website. Since a young age, Marc dreamed of becoming a legitimate critic and having that famous “Rotten Tomato” approved status – in 2023, he achieved that status.

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DVD & Streaming

Your Place or Mine

Comedy , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

Reese Witherspoon as Debbie Dunn; Ashton Kutcher as Peter Coleman; Jesse Williams as Theo; Wesley Kimmel as Jack; Zoë Chao as Minka; Steve Zahn as Zen; Tig Notaro as Alicia; Rachel Bloom as Scarlet; Vella Lovell as Becca; Shiri Appleby as Vanessa; Tanner Swagger as Evan; Mystic Inscho as Wade; Griffin Matthews as Professor Golden; Britney Young as Marisa

Home Release Date

February 10, 2023
Aline Brosh McKenna

Distributor

Movie review.

Peter and Debbie are just friends. They’re great friends. After a one-night stand, they decided to be nothing more than that, in fact.

The two call each other from their homes nearly every day—Peter from his apartment in New York City, Debbie from hers in Los Angeles. Debbie’s got a final she needs to take in New York, but she needs someone to watch her kid, Jack, while she’s away. And, well, Peter’s just such a great friend that he volunteers to do just that at her home while she stays in his .

But despite their friendship, Peter can’t help but wonder if Debbie might be the cause of some commitment issues he’s struggling with. For example, he lost his girlfriend because she felt they weren’t going anywhere, and he turned down a job offer with a company he was contracting with because he felt it wasn’t the right fit. Nothing, actually, feels like the right fit.

And when Debbie meets a friendly guy in New York and hits it off, well, Peter starts to realize just who that right fit might be—and she might be slipping away.

Positive Elements

Debbie wants what is best for her son Jack, though her methods are a bit overprotective. She’s grown to believe that always playing it safe produces a much better life than taking any risks. But her desire for safety has left Jack feeling miserable.

When Peter arrives, he helps to teach Debbie that she doesn’t need to keep such a tight grip on everything Jack does. He helps her see that though it’s important for them to guide and help Jack, they can just as easily hinder his growth by completely controlling his life.

Spiritual Elements

A man says his name is “Zen, yeah, like the Buddhism.”

Sexual Content

Multiple sensual moments are seen or alluded to. We see Peter and Debbie passionately kiss and move onto a bed to have offscreen sex. We see Peter in his underwear and Debbie in a bra on a couple of occasions. Debbie also has offscreen sex with another man, but she accidentally turns on Peter’s home camera, causing him to catch a glimpse of her in a bra passionately kissing the shirtless guy.

A supporting character is a lesbian and briefly mentions her partner. Peter’s ex-girlfriend, Minka, arrives in a somewhat revealing outfit at his apartment and finds Debbie there instead. She expresses disappointment that Peter’s not home, saying that she’s “not wearing anything under this.” Peter tells Debbie that she might find love in New York, “and we’ll have a big ol’ sex party up in here.” We also hear other references to one-night stands.

A man says that Debbie is his “part-time lover” and that they’re “friends with benefits.” A few women wear low-cut shirts that reveal cleavage. A woman suggestively attempts to convince Peter to go home with her. Two women talk about getting their private regions waxed.

Debbie and Peter bathe (in separate tubs), but nothing is shown. An unclothed woman is seen from the shoulders up. A man bends over in a garden, and the camera makes a point to show his “plumber’s crack.” Debbie finds something under a nightstand, causing a friend to say “What is it? Drugs? Porn?”

Violent Content

Peter throws his phone in disgust and accidentally shatters a vase. Jack gets hurt during a hockey game, and he has to go to the ER to test for a concussion.

Crude or Profane Language

The f-word is used once, and the s-word is used 12 times. We also hear the occasional uses of “a–,” “d–n” and “h—.” Someone is called a “butthole,” and someone else exclaims, “Screw that!” We also hear over 40 misuses of God’s name, and we hear someone say the acronym “GD.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Peter mentions being to rehab twice, and he makes it a point not to drink alcohol. Debbie and Minka drink at a bar, and we see other alcoholic beverages, too. Peter references how his dad died “drunk in a ditch,” and Debbie talks about her “drunk mother.” We hear that goldfish died “in a bong fire.”

Other Negative Elements

Peter lets Jack do things he knows Debbie would disapprove of. Debbie publishes a hidden draft of Peter’s book without his permission or knowledge. A song talks about shoplifting. We hear a reference to someone urinating on a sofa.

Your Place or Mine is a romantic comedy, or so its IMDb page tells us.

It’s the type of film that you already know the ending to before you’ve finished watching the first minute of it. And while those kinds of films can certainly be endearing and procure lovely, feel-good emotions, I never quite got that with this Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon flick. In fact, when the obligatory other love interest was introduced…I was kinda rooting for him over Kutcher’s character?

Part of the problem rests in a plot that really takes its time to get going. Case in point, nearly an hour into the less-than-two-hour movie, I was surprised that nothing of substance had quite yet happened. To be honest, the film is better suited as a story about Debbie’s son gaining some confidence than it is a romance.

But perhaps the movie uses the genre as an excuse for its many sensual moments or references. And as long as we’re discussing content issues, viewers should also be aware of quite a few s-words and misuses of God’s name.

I don’t know if this is a movie that would play at your place. But it won’t be playing at mine.

Kennedy Unthank

Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”

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Your Place Or Mine Review

10 Feb 2023

Your Place Or Mine

Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes this perfectly serviceable but ideas-bereft romcom, which plays like a Tesco Value- When Harry Met Sally crossed with a Middle of Lidl- The Holiday . Perhaps, in the current glut of quick, thoughtless romcoms that the streamers are presently so beholden to, that shouldn’t be a surprise, but Your Place Or Mine never aspires to being more than being just aggressively fine.

The big draw, at least according to the marketing, is to see Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher — both of whom owe their early careers to romcoms, both of whom have shied away from lead roles in recent years — sharing the screen for the first time. If that is indeed what hooked you in, prepare to be disappointed, as they barely share a frame together for more than ten minutes, most of their interactions taking place in split screen phone conversations. Undeniably, these are actors with folksy charm and A-list looks. They have charisma to spare. But with this kind of material, that only takes you so far down the road.

For the most part, the script by writer-director Aline Brosh McKenna wraps itself in the comfort blanket of the genre tropes. There are troubled kids to win over. There is a final act airport dash. There are kooky best friends who hang on the fringes, their sole purpose to offer wacky one-liners and obvious life lessons. ( Tig Notaro ’s bone-dry deadpannery is the clear standout of a mixed bag.) The film doesn’t even try to pretend that Debbie and Peter shouldn’t be together — one supporting character directly asks why they’re not in the first five minutes — so the usual contrivances to keep them apart feel even more absurd than they normally would.

Your Place Or Mine is simply and purely fine: merely adequate, to its marrow.

Nothing feels remotely authentic or real; even by American romcom standards, the world these characters inhabit is insanely glossy and excessively aspirational. He lives in a multi-million-dollar Brooklyn apartment with floor-to-ceiling views of the Manhattan Bridge. She lives in a palatial Beverly Hills mansion with a landscaped garden. There is much talk of “remodelling kitchens” and characters being “independently wealthy due to a tech buyout”. Who is doing the accounting on these lifestyles? How can a single mother be living in a hedge fund billionaire’s second home?

Occasionally we get flashes of a better, more insightful film. It’s mildly refreshing to see a romance between characters in their 40s, people who have lived a life already, people old enough to acknowledge how you’re “dumb when you’re in your 20s” — even if said people are implausibly, impeccably, unrealistically attractive. There are gestures, too, to darker subplots, with Peter revealed to be a recovering alcoholic, though these are avenues only tiptoed towards.

Look, Kutcher and Witherspoon are good company and lovely to look at, and you can’t begrudge them the paycheque. But ultimately, this is a romantic comedy that is neither especially romantic nor sufficiently comedic. Your Place Or Mine is simply and purely fine: merely adequate, to its marrow. It is just worth considering, before adding this to your watchlist, whether we should demand a bit more, even from sofa-based comfort-watches.

Movies | 12 01 2023

Your Place or Mine movie review: A charming romantic comedy

By ricky valero | feb 9, 2023.

Your Place or Mine (2023). Reese Witherspoon as Debbie Dunn, Ashton Kutcher as Peter. Cr. Netflix

Love is in the air as we head into Valentine’s Day weekend. Netflix is trying to get your attention with its brand new romantic comedy starring two veteran rom-com actors in Your Place or Mine . Is the movie worth checking out? Let’s dive in.

Your Place or Mine follows the story of two best friends whose lives went two separate ways. When they are on the verge of coming together, something happens to lead to one of them volunteering to watch the other kid. The film was written and directed by Aline Brosh McKenna and stars Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon.

It’s 2003, and we meet Debbie and Peter, who are on the verge of sleeping together. Now, we fast forward twenty years, and the two of them are sleeping in bed in what looks like at first together, and Debbie tells Peter happy birthday. However, Debbie is in LA, Zen is in New York, and they are on the phone. So, after a cute back-and-forth banter between the two, they head to their respective day.

Well, Debbie, after many years, finally made a plan to visit Peter in New York, but her sister let her down and bailed last minute. Peter wasn’t having that, so he called and said he would come to take care of her son, and she could fly to New York. Reluctant to do it, Peter convinces her it’ll be all okay, and she decides to do it. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen right?

Witherspoon and Kutcher make the perfect on-screen combo

When you watched the movie’s trailer , you had a good idea of what we would get, and the script has some of the typical beats that can be expected within this genre. That said, a few things made this film a little more fun than I expected. First, the relationship between Peter (Kutcher) and Jack was something I didn’t expect to flourish like it did to give us something heartfelt outside of the relationship between Peter and Debbie to root for. Then, Zen, a perfectly written off-the-wall character, provided this hilarious balance when some emotional beats hit.

Of course, the biggest reason this movie worked was Witherspoon and Kutcher. I forgot how much I missed Ashton Kutcher in movies. It’s been almost a decade since he has been a leading man, and my goodness, does that charm and humor that still hits home runs. He has the perfect charisma to make his character easy to love. He and Witherspoon are dynamic together, making the relationship between Debbie and Peter easy to root for throughout the film’s journey. I just love these two so much.

Overall, what a cute, charming little movie that is dropping during the perfect time of the year. Everyone will be looking for a film to watch with their significant other this weekend, and you won’t find a better one than Your Place or Mine.

Your Place or Mine hits Netflix on Feb. 10, 2023.

Next. 6 movies to watch (and 3 to skip) in February. dark

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Review: Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher shine in a rom-com

This image released by Netflix shows Reese Witherspoon, left, and Ashton Kutcher in a scene from “Your Place or Mine.” (Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Tig Notaro, left, and Ashton Kutcher in a scene from “Your Place or Mine.” (Erin Simkin/Netflix via AP)

Reese Witherspoon, left, and Ashton Kutcher arrive at the world premiere of “Your Place Or Mine,” Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, at Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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If you decide to settle in and watch “Your Place or Mine” to see the sparks fly between Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, you’ll be initially disappointed. They’re not in the same room until the last 12 minutes.

The premise of this particular Netflix rom-com is two old friends switching homes for a week and snapping each other out of their ruts. Might they also fall in love? (Do many rom-coms not end that way?)

In this one, Witherspoon and Kutcher play opposites — he’s a rich consultant who lives in a chic but chilly New York apartment; she’s an earthy and protective single mom to a 13-year-old boy in Los Angeles. They hooked up 20 years ago but decided friendship was the better path.

These two talk every day, forcing the filmmakers to spend a fortune on split screens. It’s an intimate relationship over two decades as each supports and encourages the other. Someone asks him the obvious question — “If you like each other so much, why aren’t you guys together?” — and there is no really good answer. She offers another: “Uh, barf.”

A last-minute emergency triggers the film’s central action: Witherspoon needs to fly to New York but her childcare main option flakes, so Kutcher’s character decides to go to Los Angeles as backup. “You need help and I’m coming,” he tells her. They find themselves in each other’s homes, getting to know each others’ friends and generally shaking things up.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows a scene from "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Written and directed by Aline Brosh McKenna, “Your Place or Mine” is cute and light from a creator known more for satires like “Devil Wears Prada” and “My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” This Valentine’s Day, it hits the spot if you’re in the mood for pretty people acting insecure and clueless.

At first, though, the film meanders with an alarming lack of urgency, as if Brosh McKenna was happy enough just filling the screen with her two beautiful leads and putting them in pretty places. You might initially mistake it as a rom-com for real estate.

Eventually, each start to see the other as a project that needs fixing. Kutcher tries to loosen up his best friend’s son — snack on junk food, letting him watch scary movies and allowing him to try out for the hockey team, all things forbidden when mom’s around. He sees it all as an extension of work: “That’s what I do: I get in, manage things, no muss, no fuss.”

On the other coast, Witherspoon finds an old manuscript her best friend has hidden from her and decides she must try to get it published. She also flirts with a hunky publisher — Jesse Williams, smoldering — and breaks all logic when she doesn’t immediately fall into the cool, sensual piercing blue of his eyes and never wants to leave... Wait, where was I?

The film soon mines an interesting area, namely how much do best friends really know about each other? When Witherspoon’s character finds the book, she is in shock. “We tell each other everything,” she says. Replies a friend: “Obviously you don’t.” This is also a film that champions taking a chance, going for it and not playing it safe.

The film allows Witherspoon and Kutcher to show off their naturally funny sides, especially when they’re fishes out of water. But many of the scenes drag on and sometimes the exposition is chalky, like when Witherspoon says: “I have to finish this program before the end of the year so I can apply for that open senior accounting position at the regional school district.”

Some smaller roles give important jolts of quirky, like Zoë Chao as a slinky former flame of Kutcher’s character in New York and Tig Notaro and Steve Zahn in LA. Notaro’s wit is as dry as a cactus, while Zahn plays a loopy gardener who is credited for writing two oddball songs on the soundtrack.

Speaking of songs, the producers must have forked over tons of cash to the estate of Ric Ocasek. To establish Kutcher’s character as a fan of The Cars, no less than nine songs — including “Heartbreak City,” “Drive” and “You Might Think” — have been used. The film’s soundtrack could double as a greatest-hits album.

The film builds to — finally! — a scene when Witherspoon and Kutcher are in the same zip code and a nice flipping of the traditional rom-com airport scene on its head. That’s when the film answers the question can men and women just be friends with a strong: “Uh, barf.”

“Your Place or Mine,” a Netflix release, is rated PG-13 for “suggestive material and brief strong language.” Running time: 111 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Online: https://www.netflix.com/title/81045831

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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‘Your Place or Mine’ Review: Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher Can’t Pull Off a ‘Sleepless In Seattle’

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Your Place Or Mine

Is it possible to make an effective romantic comedy in which the two leads are almost never in the same scene? Before you say, “No,”—because the answer feels like an obvious no —consider Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle , often considered one of greatest romantic comedies of all time. For 80 minutes, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan don’t exchange one word of dialogue, until, at long last, in the movie’s iconic final scene, they meet atop the Empire State Building. So, yes, it is possible… if you have Nora Ephron, Tom Hanks, and Meg Ryan. Unfortunately, Your Place or Mine , Netflix’s new romantic comedy that begins streaming tomorrow, has none of those things. And it’s definitely no Sleepless in Seattle .

Written and directed by Aline Brosh McKenna—best known for writing The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses , and co-creating Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — Your Place or Mine stars Ashton Kutcher as a rich, playboy bachelor named Peter who volunteers to spend a week in Los Angeles babysitting for his neurotic, single mother BFF named Debbie (played by Reese Witherspoon). Debbie is spending a week in Peter’s New York City bachelor pad, while she finishes up her graduate degree in accounting. So, essentially, Peter and Debbie trade lives for a week. And though they are not physically in the same space, they also spend that week falling in love with each other.

Because they are almost never in the same scene, the premise—like Sleepless in Seattle —relies on the audience’s faith that these two leads do have chemistry. Even if we don’t see the sparks fly on screen, we are asked to believe these two are destined to be together. Ephron neatly solved that problem in 1993 by casting Hanks and Ryan, who audiences had already seen together in the 1990 romantic comedy, Joe Versus the Volcano . It’s Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan! Of course they’re in love!

Reese Witherspoon

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Your Place or Mine doesn’t have that ace-in-the-hole casting. Kutcher and Witherspoon are both rom-com veterans, but we’ve never seen them together before, and we haven’t seen either on screen as romantic leads in years. It’s imperative that we see these two in the same room at least once before the long-distance yearning begins. Otherwise, why would we ever care? McKenna obliges by showing us Peter and Debbie’s “meet-cute” in the opening scene. The entire movie is riding on this. And, maybe, if that opening scene had knocked it out of the park, the film would have worked.

Unfortunately, Your Place or Mine blows it. The opening is the worst scene in the movie. It’s 2003, and Debbie and Peter are drunkenly hooking up after a poker game. There’s no flirting; no build-up; no set-up as to who these people are, or why they are making out with each other. And, crucially, the chemistry is not there. This may not be Kutcher and Witherspoon’s fault—the dialogue has a bizarre, rush-job feel to it. “I’m actually a big reader,” Debbie tells Peter between kisses, to which Peter replies, “Are you? That’s crazy! I’m going to be a big writer one day.” Who talks like that?

It’s all filmed in dim lighting and far-away shots, possibly to hide the fact that Witherspoon and Kutcher are decidedly not in their 20s. But the fact that McKenna tried to hide that only made me think about it more. Was de-aging technology used? Probably not, but it’s all I could think about! The cherry on top is the cutesy, on-screen captions that read, “It’s 2003. How can we tell?” Arrows appear on the screen, pointing out basic costume details, like Witherspoon’s flat-ironed hair and layered shirts. Perhaps, in theory, this gimmick was intended to distract from the supreme awkwardness of the scene. In practice, it comes across as the film patting itself on the back for doing something audiences expect most movies to do—design costumes appropriate to the era—without clever commentary.

Things do get better from there, but never enough to recover. Your Place or Mine missed its one shot to make us care about Peter and Debbie getting together, and as a result, the next 80 minutes they spend apart is a slog. Everyone knows watching actors talk on the phone—or, god forbid, FaceTime—is boring. (Again, unless you’re Nora Ephron.) The split screen McKenna employs for these phone calls feels off; the timing of the dialogue is too precise to feel natural. There are good parts: Kutcher gets to have some fun fish-out-of-water parenting moments with his young scene partner, child actor Wesley Kimmel (the nephew of talk show host Jimmy Kimmel); and his big romantic speech in the finale will remind you that you’ve missed seeing his leading man charm on screen.

Witherspoon is not as fortunate. Because she is essentially left on her own for the entire film, Your Place or Mine invents a non-character character (played by Zoë Chao, who doesn’t deserve this) purely to give Witherspoon someone to talk to. What kind of dynamic is Witherspoon supposed to have with a random hook-up of Peter’s who has absolutely no reason to pal around with Debbie, and yet, inexplicably, does just that? The movie doesn’t know, and neither does Witherspoon.

This doesn’t feel like her fault; it feels like miscasting. Meg Ryan was at the height of her rom-com career when she sat alone in a car, listening to Tom Hanks on the radio, and she delivered one of the best performances of her career. Witherspoon is more in her drama era ( Little Fires Everywhere, The Morning Show ) and seems most comfortable in a producer role these days. Is it any surprise that Witherspoon can’t pull off a Meg-Ryan-alone-in-a-car while Debbie is muttering to herself alone in Peter’s apartment? That’s doubly true when the dialogue is nowhere near on par with Ephron’s.

Sleepless in Seattle kept its leads separate in a way that was deliciously tantalizing; deliberately teasing the audience with near-misses again and again. When Hanks steps into the elevator to descend the Empire State Building at the exact moment the doors to Ryan’s ascending elevator open? C’mon! It’s a masterclass in building romantic tension without ever having your leads make eye contact. Your Place or Mine, on the other hand, has zero tension. There are no near-misses, no miscommunications, and no reason to root for our lead couple. We are told they have this amazing friendship, but we are shown precisely none of that. It feels less like a deliberate, artistic separation and more like a cheap solution for the crazy schedules of A-list actors. By the time Peter and Debbie finally reunite at LAX—an admittedly brilliantly choreographed scene using people movers, easily the standout moment of the film—it’s too late.

So, can you make an effective romantic comedy without having the leads interact? Not like this, sadly. Give Your Place or Mine a near miss, and watch Sleepless in Seattle again, instead.

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Your Place or Mine review: A modern rom-com slog

Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher can't connect in this shiny but sluggish bauble, now on Netflix.

It is probably not great news for your project if you spend half the press tour defending your lack of red-carpet chemistry with your co-star . The carpet may be kinder, though, or at least mercifully briefer, than actually sitting through Your Place or Mine , an experience that often feels like watching two movie stars try to set fire to a pile of wet leaves for 100-plus minutes. What should be breezy, featherweight fun — Reese ! Ashton ! A screenplay by the lady who wrote The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses ! — instead turns out to be oddly hollow, a meandering and synthetic approximation of classic rom-com canon with too little romance or comedy in its strained, familiar formula.

Wet piles or not, it is of course foregone that these two will end up together by the last shot: Witherspoon's Debbie, a cheerful Los Angeles accountant and single mom, and Kutcher's Tom, a successful New York business consultant with a vaguely broken soul (his loft apartment is immaculate, and all his relationships die by the six-month mark). They've been best friends for nearly 20 years, after one misbegotten night together long ago; now Debbie needs an accounting certificate that she can only get in Manhattan, so Tom agrees to fly out and watch her young son, Jack (Wesley Kimmel; yes, he's Jimmy's nephew) while she does it.

Soon Debbie is ensconced in Tom's Brooklyn bachelor pad getting her Gen-X groove back, and he's in her L.A. cottage, teaching the overprotected Jack how to live. Naturally, this coastal exchange program also entails recruiting at least one new sidekick-slash-antagonist for them both: Debbie gets Minka ( Love Life 's Zoe Chao), a daffy party girl in Tom's casual dating rotation who insists on showing her the best of New York — including a bar where a dreamboat book publisher named Theo ( Jesse Williams ) awaits, ready to reawaken Debbie's dusty loins. Tom gets Tig Notaro' s Alicia, a brightly sardonic teacher at Jack's school, and Steve Zahn as a neighbor who mostly loiters in Debbie's yard like a stoned garden gnome.

As in many movies like this, the ancillary characters are easily more interesting than the central ones we're supposed to care about. Can't we follow Alicia home to her two kids and her wife who makes bad recipes she found on TikTok? What might Theo and Minka get up to on a Friday night when they're not busy helping blonde ladies from L.A. self-actualize? Instead, screenwriter and director Aline Brosh McKenna — whose credits include Cruella , Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , and perhaps most deathlessly, the aforementioned Prada — continues to toggle between her polished, empty leads, marking time till the moment these two hollow-core planks finally acknowledge their destiny (trust that there will be wildly obvious epiphanies, achieved in airports).

Tom and Debbie are so broadly sketched out, and their conflicts and issues so indifferently resolved — there's a literary subplot that wafts in, then promptly sees itself it out — it's as if McKenna can't quite be bothered, and so she just gestures vaguely at the CliffsNotes of all the rom-coms that came before. The box-office success late last year of the weightless George Clooney-Julia Roberts caper Ticket to Paradise proved that there's a whole unserved demographic still hungry for movies like these: millions weaned on exactly the kind of clever, fizzy confections that rightfully made Witherspoon and Kutcher famous. Those same viewers will probably make Your Place a hit too, or whatever counts as the equivalent on Netflix. But everyone here — the actors, the audience, the genre — deserves better. Grade: C–

Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher Try to Revive the Romcom With Zero Chemistry

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

He lives in New York, she in LA. She has a home, shared with her 13-year-old son, that feels remarkably homey : lived-in and warm and deliberately modest in size, helplessly convincing us of its innate coziness. He lives in a steely Brooklyn apartment with a view of Manhattan that’s furnished with a stove he’s never used, cutlery that’s never been opened, and a despairing lack of tchotchkes — there is not so much as a photo of himself or anyone he loves in plain sight. His books are organized by color (a crime); her decor amounts to a surplus of loving details. She is a single mother who’s already withstood the disappointment of divorce. He seems resigned to relationships that conform to a strict six-month term limit. Wouldn’t you know it: They’re made for each other.

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It’s all a tell, because what’s dangerously clear from the start is that Witherspoon and Kutcher have no romantic, and certainly no sexual, chemistry. It’s screaming stay platonic. The awkward but somehow incredible thing about Your Place or Mine is the effort put into convincing us otherwise. Kutcher, bearing a youthful smile that makes him seem a little too green for these shenanigans, never strictly comes off as an irredeemable choice for a romantic partner, but he also never gets to be interesting, whereas Witherspoon gets to do what she does best. Here she is, look at her go: showing up to her seminar with a backpack and new school supplies, practically huffing the scent of a newly-sharpened pencil, being all wide-eyed and adorably game for the joys of life, being completely absent of any kind of cynicism. When she and Williams’s publisher get to prattle their way through a handful of cute scenes, the movie finally lands on something: a counterargument. Witherspoon, nearly to the movie’s detriment, sells us on the sexy appeal of this fresh alternative to her ongoing situation with Kutcher as, in the same moment, Kutcher’s storyline flails in search of something interesting to do. It’s a wonder we’re even pretending that the Debbie and Peter thing ought to automatically work out.

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Your Place or Mine Reviews

No All Critics reviews for Your Place or Mine.

IMAGES

Your Place or Mine? (2015)
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‘Your Place or Mine’ Review: Try Neither

COMMENTS

Your Place or Mine movie review (2023)
Powered by JustWatch. "Your Place or Mine" begins in 2003, and it feels like the kind of superficially agreeable and instantly forgettable romantic comedy that came out around that time. These are the movies that have found new life in heavy rotation on the monitors at DryBar: " How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days ," "The Holiday," and ...
Your Place or Mine
Dec 29, 2023. Rated: C- • Sep 11, 2023. Sep 8, 2023. Debbie (Reese Witherspoon) and Peter (Ashton Kutcher) are best friends and total opposites. She craves routine with her son in LA; he thrives ...
'Your Place or Mine' Review: Try Neither
So it's all the more confounding that their latest, "Your Place or Mine," is as phony and flat as a store-bought valentine forced on every kid in class. Witherspoon and Kutcher play Debbie ...
Your Place or Mine Movie Review
Our review: Parents say Not yet rated Rate movie. Kids say ( 3 ): You know the lead characters will get together, but the road to happily-ever-after in this romantic comedy is less predictable than you might suspect from the trailer. Your Place or Mine (a title that also doesn't do the story justice) certainly follows the formula -- from meet ...
Your Place or Mine (2023)
Your Place or Mine: Directed by Aline Brosh McKenna. With Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher, Zoë Chao, Jesse Williams. Two long-distance best friends change each other's lives when she decides to pursue a lifelong dream and he volunteers to keep an eye on her teenage son.
'Your Place or Mine' Review: Witherspoon and Kutcher in Rom ...
In fact, it's two bad movies in one. Debbie (Witherspoon) and Peter (Kutcher) slept together once, back in 2003, and then became platonic best friends. She lives in L.A., he lives in New York ...
'Your Place or Mine' Review: Reese Witherspoon & Ashton Kutcher Star
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher, Jesse Williams, Zoë Chao, Wesley Kimmel. Director-screenwriter: Aline Brosh McKenna. Rated PG-13, 1 hour 51 minutes. Thankfully, Your Place or Mine doesn ...
Your Place or Mine
Full Review | Feb 19, 2023. Your Place Or Mine is filled with upbeat performances by Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, who star in a film that helps bring back the fun and light-hearted ...
Your Place or Mine
I really don't get the reviews, but this movie was awesome. Read More Report. 60. Rolling Stone Feb 13, 2023 ... YOUR PLACE OR MINE sees Reese and Ashton playing Debbie and Peter, who've been best friends for 20 years even though they're total opposites. Practical, risk-averse accountant Debbie craves routine and stability with her son Jack ...
Your Place or Mine (2023)
2 out of 5 stars. Your Place or Mine is a bad romantic comedy film that not only is predictable with its plot but falls flat with the two main characters Reece Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher. There performances are flat with there characters. The chemistry is tedious. About two best friends switched places for a week.
Your Place or Mine review
Your Place or Mine review - Netflix romcom has big stars but little charm This article is more than 1 year old Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher play best friends who swap houses for a week ...
'Your Place or Mine' Review: Ashton Kutcher, Reese ...
From the get-go, the film works hard to be likable as it progresses through a relatable digital medium, but it's hard to tell what the movie wants to be as it dips into a terminal case of ...
Your Place or Mine review
3. Summary. Your Place or Mine has an infectious charm and some genuine laughs, though the ending needed a rewrite. Directed by Aline Brosh McKenna, we review the 2023 Netflix film Your Place or Mine, which does not contain spoilers. This is a week of romantic comedies at Ready Steady Cut. Every streaming service is premiering one, and yours ...
Your Place or Mine
Movie Review. Peter and Debbie are just friends. They're great friends. After a one-night stand, they decided to be nothing more than that, in fact. ... Your Place or Mine is a romantic comedy, or so its IMDb page tells us. It's the type of film that you already know the ending to before you've finished watching the first minute of it ...
Your Place Or Mine
Your Place Or Mine is simply and purely fine: merely adequate, to its marrow. It is just worth considering, before adding this to your watchlist, whether we should demand a bit more, even from ...
Your Place or Mine movie review: A charming romantic comedy
Your Place or Mine is coming out on Netflix on February 10, 2023. The movie stars Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon. We share our review of the film.
'Your Place or Mine' Netflix Review: Stream It Or Skip It?
So. Your Place or Mine is glossy fluff, a cotton-candy movie that's sweet in the moment but disintegrates in seconds. The principal stars are nice to look at and have decent chemistry, the ...
Review: Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher shine in a rom-com
If you decide to settle in and watch "Your Place or Mine" to see the sparks fly between Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, you'll be initially disappointed. They're not in the same room until the last 12 minutes. The premise of this particular Netflix rom-com is two old friends switching homes for a week and snapping each other out ...
'Your Place or Mine' Review: Reese Witherspoon and Ashton ...
The entire movie is riding on this. And, maybe, if that opening scene had knocked it out of the park, the film would have worked. Unfortunately, Your Place or Mine blows it. The opening is the ...
Your Place or Mine review: A modern rom-com slog
The carpet may be kinder, though, or at least mercifully briefer, than actually sitting through Your Place or Mine, an experience that often feels like watching two movie stars try to set fire to ...
Your Place or Mine (film)
Your Place or Mine is a 2023 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Aline Brosh McKenna in her directorial debut. The film stars Reese Witherspoon (who also produced) and Ashton Kutcher as best friends who end up swapping houses for a week. Jesse Williams, Zoë Chao, Wesley Kimmel, Tig Notaro, and Steve Zahn also star.. The film was released on Netflix on February 10, 2023.
'Your Place or Mine': Reese and Ashton Have Zero Chemistry, and Yet…
By K. Austin Collins. February 10, 2023. Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher in 'Your Place or Mine.'. Netflix. He lives in New York, she in LA. She has a home, shared with her 13-year-old son ...
Your Place or Mine
All Critics. Top Critics. All Audience. Verified Audience. No All Critics reviews for Your Place or Mine. Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for ...
Taylor Swift
[Chorus] I hate it here so I will go to lunar valleys in my mind When they found a better planet, only the gentle survived I dreamed about it in the dark, the night I felt like I might die No mid ...

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‘Your Place or Mine’ Review: As Best Friends (Wink, Wink), Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher Get Stuck in Chintzy Rom-Com Hell

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