Review
Your Place or Mine (Romance, Comedy) (2023)
Director: Aline Brosh McKenna
Writer: Aline Brosh McKenna
Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher, Steve Zahn, Tig Notaro
Living on opposite sides of the United States, two best friends who once hooked-up swap homes and discover things they hid from each other and never shared.
As her feature film debut, Aline Brosh McKenna presents a long-distance rom-com, different but very much the same. It was announced in 2020 with Reese Witherspoon and her company being a producer. It’s been produced by Hello Sunshine, Lean Machine and Aggregate Films and distributed by Netflix.
Having slept together years ago, Peter (Ashton Kutcher) and Debbie (Reese Witherspoon) have become best friends calling each other several times a day. Due to work, they’ve been living on opposite sides of the United States. But, when Debbie decides to take an accountancy program at a New York college, Peter agrees to swap homes, so Debbie can use his apartment as he watches over Debbie’s son.
While being in entirely different situations, ‘’Your Place or Mine’’ tells how similar life can be, showing two people in completely different situations inadvertently mirroring each other before taking the plunge and admitting feelings of true love.
More often than not, romantic comedies rarely conceal their endings. Perhaps because it’s not really about the finale, more so about the journey. McKenna’s ‘’Your Place or Mine’’ presents much the same; while there are clearly other admirers of Witherspoon’s Debbie and Kutcher’s Peter before the expected end becomes a reality, these other attractions are fleeting.
For the reasonably generic rom-com ‘’Your Place or Mine’’ appears as, spending the last decade as a showrunner on TV-series ‘’Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’’ leaves Aline Brosh McKenna with honed talent and fairly capable of producing a rom-com such as this. With Witherspoon producing and other familiar faces such as Kutcher and Notaro, it’s a fitting film within the pre-valentine’s day line-up. There’s a colourful aesthetic, jovial demeanours, and perhaps overly attendant friends—each, however, is introduced well.
There’s no doubt about how predictable nor stuffy it truly is but in all honesty an eager attempt at a rom-com feature. Some throwbacks to older films present in the split-screen calls, as Kutcher’s Peter and Witherspoon’s Debbie are seemingly averse to video calls; other options might’ve been cinematographically out of budget. While guided through the relatively uneventful script, you quickly realise there’s not much point to it, so it’s best to let the mind wander without too much thought.
This pre-valentine’s day release doesn’t seem to be much of a passion project, littered with product placement and certainly not very inventive. Still, there’s something enjoyable, decent but never more than that. If you’re really into rom-coms, it’s something you’d want to check out, otherwise—skip it.
Verdict
Neither.
6,0
