Your Place or Mine

The only requirement a rom-com needs to have to be watchable is chemistry between the two leads. It doesn’t have to have a powerful message or inspired writing, if the two leads offer some sexual tension or electricity then nothing else about the movie matters. Romantic comedies are supposed to be fun and cheesy with a sense of escapism and to achieve that the actors need to convince us that romance can happen in these conditions. Sadly Netflix’s new romantic comedy, Your Place or Mine, which features two alums of the genre lacks chemistry that makes audience reevaluate its purpose. 

Witherspoon and Kutcher team up for the simple premise of two friends that live on opposite coasts and swap residences. They spend the runtime of an hour and 52 minutes to realize that maybe after all this time they have feelings for each other. As a helicopter mother, Debbie, played by Witherspoon embarks on life in New York, and the unemotional Peter played by Kutcher introduces Debbie’s son to live outside his mother’s grasp. The two remain separated experimenting with new ways of life until the very end. Their time onscreen together is through split-screen phone calls that give the term “phoning in their performances.” a new meaning. 

Another requirement for a successful rom-com is likable, charming characters. Each actor feels like they are playing themselves relying on the best of their reliable skillset to get them through the script. They attempt to use gags for laughs like Peter seeing Debbie hooking up with a man through his security cameras or Debbie ordering a drink that has too many garnishes. Neither adds laughs or anything special to a lifeless story. 

The movie shows promise in its Y2K flashback opening, but it has a try-hard nature to have a quirk that sets the rest of the film on a bland path. There is no personality in the rest of the film with its too-perfect production design and doctor office lighting that feels barely lived in for either character in their respective cities. Having Los Angeles and New York as its settings, the film does nothing to bring either city to life as a character like past films in the genre does.

With a talented cast and director who was behind The Devil Wears Prada, Your Place or Mine feels like another wasted attempt to revamp a once popular genre.