Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher recently went viral for their lack of chemistry at the premiere of their new Netflix romantic comedy, Your Place or Mine. The pair stood a foot apart from each other, lopsided smiles splashed across their faces, looking like a pair of middle schoolers who just exited a closet after a Seven Minutes in Heaven session spent entirely talking about the weather and a mean gym teacher. There were no sparks between them, clearly. But, hey, at least they were actually in the same room, something Your Place or Mine completely fails to do.
The new rom-com—which is devoid of all charm, charisma, and comedy—sticks its two stars in two cities 3,000 miles apart: New York and Los Angeles. Because of this major physical gap, there’s actually more chemistry present in the red carpet photos than there is in the film itself. You’d have a more fun time scrolling through some of the better photos (yes, they look friendly in a few) than you would watching L.A. resident Debbie (Witherspoon) and New Yorker Peter (Kutcher) play phone tag for nearly two hours.
Debbie and Peter, who first met and hooked up in Los Angeles around two decades ago, are a byproduct of the Nora Ephron school of thought. They are friends who are in love, a la When Harry Met Sally, but they never see each other in person, communicating through buzzes and beeps like Tom and Meg in You’ve Got Mail. They didn’t stay together after that first night because—well, it’s so predictable that it’s pointless to regurgitate. Peter got scared of commitment, and by the time he came to his senses, Debbie was already with the man who’d become the father of her child, Jack (Wesley Kimmel).
In the present day, Debbie and Peter still phone each other all the time. He wakes up on his birthday to a call from recently divorced Debbie, chatting with her until his girlfriend is so peeved, she ends things. Who wouldn’t be upset? Peter and Debbie’s attraction for each other is more obvious than that of Harry and Sally in the first two acts of When Harry Met Sally. There’s no room for them to develop romantic feelings over the course of the film, or to have that big realization that they were meant to be together. By the time the rom-com starts, their love for one another is so blatantly obvious that the story should already be over.
Reese Witherspoon as Debbie Dunn, Zoe Chao as Minka.
Erin Simkin / NetflixStill, the show must go on! After teeing all of this backstory up for the first half hour, Your Place or Mine finally gets to the real plot of the film: Debbie will be attending school in New York to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a book editor. But at the last minute, her babysitter cancels, and she’s left with no one to watch her preteen, allergy-ridden son. Peter, who left LA because of his fear of earthquakes and hasn’t been back since, volunteers for the job. He’s got his work cut out for him—because Jack is bullied at school, Debbie aggressively helicopter parents the poor kid.
Meanwhile, Debbie has no trouble getting into the swing of the Big Apple. She kicks it with one of Peter’s flings, Minka (Zoë Chao), as well as Theo (Jesse Williams), a handsome publisher she meets on one of her first days in the city. Debbie seduces Theo, while also using him to get Peter’s long-lost manuscript into the editing rounds. The pair have swanky dinners at high-rise restaurants, talk about their career field, and enjoy the pleasantries of a burgeoning relationship under the starry lights of Manhattan’s beautiful bridges and larger-than-life buildings—wait, is this the rom-com we’ve been waiting for?
No, because Netflix’s rom-com heroines always crash into the same old formula that feels so tired and even, unfortunately, vaguely racist. We’ve seen this happen before in The Kissing Booth, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Tall Girl; the list goes on—and here, we’re seeing it again: Our leading lady is making a decision between two men, one white and one a man of color. The man of color is always much more charismatic and better for our girl, as she questions her ties to the white man.
Tig Notaro as Alicia, Ashton Kutcher as Peter.
Erin Simkin / NetflixIn this movie, Peter threatens the life of Debbie’s poor son while she’s away from home—and she still leaves Theo waiting on an answer about their relationship. Debbie spends almost the entirety of the runtime with Theo, a perfect set-up for them to fall in love against all odds, but she still opts for a man who stores his writing projects in the oven. Rom-coms are unbelievable and fantastical, sure, but this is far-fetched in a way that depletes any of the movie’s already minimal charm.
This tension between Theo and Debbie, though, comes as a direct result of Peter being in a different city, as usual. No joke; the lead actors spend a whopping two scenes together in the entire film. Kutcher’s wife, Mila Kunis, recently said in an interview that she tried to help her husband work on his chemistry with Witherspoon. For what, the awkward first time they have sex? The sappy airport ending? On how to teeter on the edge of (but never really get into) phone sex or FaceTime flirting? Long-distance relationships exist, sure, but watching Witherspoon force herself to have chemistry with an iPhone isn’t exactly the ideal romantic comedy scenario.
Though Your Place of Mine has many signature rom-com elements—the houses are big, bright, and beautiful; the cities sparkle while our leads fall in love; the side characters are quippy and fun—the romantic heart of the movie is drained into a dry, soulless dump. It’s hard to mess up a friends-to-lovers plot starring two beautiful A-List stars with rom-com credentials. But putting them in no scenes physically together, their feelings for each other strapped to a flimsy friendship based on one hook-up, will do it. Instead of debating whose place to stay at, maybe Kutcher and Witherspoon should’ve booked a hotel in the middle to spend some quality time together.
