I have always maintained that the path more treaded is harder to follow when it comes to genre filmmaking. All formulaic approaches have reached a standstill, be it horror, action, or romantic comedy, which comes into question here. Rare innovations offer an opportunity to recontextualize them and get one’s hopes up. The saturation point for the consumer comes when they can predict what is going to happen next and have already checked their phones and done loads of other household chores before the film ends. Sadly, for Aline Brosh McKenna’s Your Place or Mine – currently streaming on Netflix – that comes way too early in the story. A project headlined by Resse Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher ought to be a bit more interesting. Alas, there is hardly any spark in the film.
Peter (Kutcher) and Debbie (Witherspoon) have been best friends for almost 20 years. They talk every day and tell each other “everything.” However, their lives changed the night they slept together, after which Peter wanted nothing to do with Debbie. In the present day, Debbie’s babysitter (for her son Jack) backs out at the last minute, and her trip to New York is in jeopardy. Peter learns about it, and they switch places in each other’s houses for a month, as Debbie lives in LA and Peter in NY. Jack and Peter forge their friendship, while Debbie runs into Peter’s ex, Minka, while also having to focus on her accountancy exam. The central conceit lies in the revelation that Peter and Debbie do not tell each other “everything.”
Saying anything more is giving the film away. Honestly, there is not a lot to give away here, but for the enthusiasts, let the mystery remain intact. The standard “boy meets girl, and they fall in love” approach is not followed in Your Place or Mine. In fact, there are subtle changes to the story’s structure to entice the viewer and arouse some intrigue. That results in a complete change of the storytelling format, wherein we see stuff like Jack and Peter’s bonding (well-conceived but poorly executed) and Debbie’s flirtations with Theo (Jesse Williams). There is also Debbie’s flailing friendship with Minka (Zhoe Chao), which again proves to be just a distraction.
What does not seem to work with the film is pretty clear: characterizations. Every great raconteur has a gift for telling stories. They do it with such skill that even age-old formulations start to fascinate. It is not the substance of what they tell but the manner in which they do it that is the most striking thing. Obviously, Aline Brosh McKenna’s effort lacks both the personal touch and the pizzazz. While one can cut her some slack since this is her feature-film directorial debut, the erstwhile mind behind films like Devil Wears Prada, Cruella, and We Bought a Zoo (as a writer) has enough experience being attached to such big projects.
The broad strokes of her characterizations in the plot do not manifest as she might have conceived them. Everything in Your Place or Mine has a fallacious sense to it. Firstly, the chemistry does not look natural. It all feels forced and without any real heart. The characters look like words on a page and speak like proper cinema inventions. While a film must be well orchestrated, it must shed the appearance of being that. The cinematic universe here does not give the impression of having any relation to real emotions. We are fed all the information through woefully cynical cues that almost insult our intelligence as an audience.
There is no subtlety to how things progress. The art of narration is profoundly lacking in McKenna’s effort. This also ensures that there is nothing to read between the lines, seeing the intangibles and measuring our experience by analyzing the variables in the story. None of that happens for Your Place or Mine. Having said all that, there is one glimmering touch of hope: Reese Witherspoon. The actress has just the right personality, size, and background to play the overbearing single mother with just enough brains and beauty that is not offputting but not readily visible.
Obviously, Witherspoon’s charming act might not be her best work. But it’s reminiscent of the bubbly person we have seen in so many similar roles. Kutcher looks jaded and uninterested as Peter Coleman. He was pretty unconvincing and not his charming, disarming self. Maybe it was the way his character was written. Nevertheless, his performance was strictly mediocre. To sum up, Your Place or Mine is a standard rom-com without any spark. Do not get your hopes up watching the personnel involved. It takes more than that to make a good movie, especially when the path of the genre is so often treaded!
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