Your Place or Mine Parent Guide

It’s 2003, an era epitomized by the three layers of T-shirts Debbie (Reese Witherspoon) peels off before impulsively having sex with Peter (Ashton Kutcher). Their one-night stand doesn’t kick off a romantic relationship but it’s the beginning of a friendship that endures through Debbie’s marriage, pregnancy, and divorce, and Peter’s stints in rehab.

Twenty years later, Peter is living in New York where he is a sought-after consultant and Debbie is a single mom focusing her energies on her son, Jack (Wesley Kimmel). To gain a badly needed promotion at work, Debbie must complete a specialized accounting class in New York. Jack is between clients so he offers to help: Debbie can stay in his Manhattan apartment and attend her course and Peter will come to Los Angeles and care for Jack. What neither of them expect is that they will make surprising discoveries about each other and themselves over the course of the week…

Your Place or Mine could have been a fun romantic comedy, but in the hands of director Aline Brosh McKenna, the story falls flat. The dialogue is often clumsily expository (honestly, sometimes flashbacks are the best option), and the delivery is sometimes clunky, especially in the early parts of the film. For most of the runtime, Ashton Kutcher is just phoning in his performance. Both Debbie and Peter are supposed to be emotionally guarded characters who fear intimacy and rejection, but Reese Witherspoon manages to inject her character with believable emotion: Kutcher is less successful, apparently believing that the way to look emotionally reserved is to simply be emotionless. He feels like a cardboard cutout of a handsome leading man: there’s nothing more there.

It doesn’t help that both characters are annoying. Peter and Debbie both have serious boundary issues, trespassing in each other’s lives and making decisions for each other that they have no right to make. Debbie’s behavior in NYC is also inconsistent with her character. She’s seeking a promotion so she can afford medication for her son, to whom she is devoted. You would think that she would throw herself into studying for her accounting class, but instead she flirts with a publisher, has a fling, spends hours reading a novel, and oversleeps on exam day. This is not the behavior of an adult who cares about succeeding in an endeavor. Frankly, the most appealing character in the movie is Jack, whose tween anxieties and character growth are ably brought to the screen by Wesley Kimmel.

The movie also has negative content issues: most notably the aforementioned one night stand and another sex scene later in the film. Both scenes see Debbie stripping down to her bra before passionately embracing her partner and being seen in bed together. There is no explicit activity or nudity, but the activity is clear. There are also scenes of alcohol consumption and over three dozen profanities.

Your Place or Mine isn’t the worst romantic comedy I’ve ever seen, but it definitely doesn’t make the top half. Your mileage may differ, but with so many better options out there, why spend 111 minutes of your life on a second rate film?