Directed by: Aline Brosh McKenna
Distributed by: Netflix
Written by Alexander Reams
40/100
Movies are memories of the time they were made in, it’s been a staple of movie-making since humans figured out that if you play the images at a certain frame rate it would give the illusion of appearing real. Take “Your Place or Mine,” a romcom that opens in 2003 as Reese Witherspoon’s Debbie Dunn and Ashton Kutcher’s Peter Coleman hookup after a night of poker. It’s a sweet moment, but superficial. We know nothing about them, all this moment does is allow two conventionally attractive people to make out and have sex, instead of building up to this moment, even showing the poker game before it gives us nothing to go on, but that’s standard for Aline Brosh McKenna’s middling directorial debut.
McKenna is no stranger to the genre and would be considered a master of the form, if only for her hilariously scathing script, “The Devil Wears Prada.” All of that talent, and two of the biggest icons to ever fake fall in love, Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon. But McKenna isn’t even close to the cutting dialogue or fleshed-out characters of “Prada” instead she goes the route of a lazy Sunday afternoon watch on Netflix. And that’s how it plays, it’s a fine watch, seeing Kutcher’s Coleman figure out how to parent, watching Witherspoon’s Dunn find out more about the man she thought she knew, courtesy of Peter’s ex-girlfriend Minka (Zoë Chao).“Your Place or Mine” doesn’t have delusions of grandeur, it knows what it is, but still gets confused because McKenna’s script is not up to the standard it should be. There is a certain charm that comes with that, but also clear wastefulness of the talent on screen. Witherspoon and Kutcher have shown that they are both strong performers but McKenna’s script never takes them further than just two attractive people. Their friendship operates at a base level, and it doesn’t seem like they are best friends. “Your Place or Mine is a waste of talent and of time.
“Your Place or Mine” Trailer
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