Your Place or Mine Review: The Perfect Netflix Rom-Com For Valentine’s Day
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher, Tig Notaro, Jesse Williams, Shiri Appleby, Rachel Bloom, Steve Zahn
Director: Aline Brosh McKenna
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Finally, January 10 has arrived, and I can tell you about Your Place or Mine, the new romantic comedy perfect for Valentine’s Day and signed by Netflix. Yes, that time of the year has arrived when many, me included, like to spend the hours you will be wrapped up in the soft warmth of a blanket, curled up on the sofa at home and perhaps holding an excellent hot chocolate accompanied by some tasty Carnival. Well, this year we’ll have a new-rom com to keep us company. Netflix together with Hello Sunshine produced Your Place or Mine, the new funny love story starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher. I saw it in the preview, and I loved it! I thought it was impossible to make a rom-com where the protagonists are distant and distant all the time, but Reese Witherspoon has shown me that nothing in love stories is off-limits. Your Place or Mine it’s really sweet, not cloying, tender, and funny. A true romantic comedy perfect for the whole family. It is a film that can be seen at any age, even the little ones can appreciate it. Your Place or Mine is the romantic comedy of Valentine’s Day 2023, there is no doubt.
Your Place or Mine Review: The Story
We are in Los Angeles in 2003. Debbie (Reese Witherspoon) and Peter (Ashton Kutcher) are two young lovers with great aspirations for the future: she dreams of becoming a successful editor, and he is a novelist. Twenty years later, in 2023, the two are still very close, but as best friends; Debbie has remained to live in Los Angeles and is a single mother who works as an accountant in the school of her twelve-year-old son. Peter is a businessman who lives in New York and changes girlfriends every six months. Having to take part in a refresher course in NY, Debbie books a flight to reach her friend who will host her for a week.
An unexpected event, however, threatens to ruin the woman’s projects: the babysitter of her son Jack, an aspiring actress, has just obtained a part of her in Vancouver and will not be able to take care of the boy in the absence of the mother. Just as Debbie begins to feel like giving up the class, Peter offers to fly to Los Angeles to stay with Jack during her friend’s days in New York. Debbie and Peter thus exchange homes and, therefore, also habits. This decision will bring out in both the awareness of not having lived the way they would have liked and that they are not happy at all.
Your Place or Mine Review and Analysis
In my life, I never thought I’d see a romantic comedy characterized by the distance between its characters. Instead, it happened! Your Place or Mine is the new rom-com signed by Netflix together with Hello Sunshine, the production company owned by Reese Witherspoon. The story is simple but very unique and fun, in true Reese Witherspoon style. The beauty of Your Place or Mine is hidden behind the irreproducible spirit of its protagonist. Reese is inimitable and carries this soul into her projects as well. The romantic comedy is sweet, carefree and funny: all qualities that we usually associate with the Hollywood actress and entrepreneurs.
Your Place or Mine begins as the story of a great indissoluble friendship but as you will imagine ends in the sweetest and purest love story. Debbie (Reese Witherspoon) and Peter (Ashton Kutcher) have been best friends for twenty years, between them there is a deep but really deep bond of friendship destined to last for life, that relationship that can withstand storms made of unsaid, quarrels and subterfuge. Debbie and Peter are simply the emblems of the purest and most tender relationship that can exist between a man and a woman, the living demonstration that friendships between genders of different sexes can be real. So, when Debbie has the opportunity of her life, Peter is ready to help her. Debbie lives in Los Angeles but the course that could elevate her professional life is in New York, where Peter lives. The two, always distant, look forward to spending some friendly time together. Too bad the situation becomes more complicated when the nanny of Debbie’s twelve-year-old son is made unavailable for the period of the trip to New York.
Debbie is more determined not to leave but Peter already has the solution ready: he will be the one to look after young Jack. Peter will stay in Los Angeles for a week in Debbie’s house while Debbie will spend time in the big apple in Peter’s house. The plan is perfect, a pity that the situation will not remain so for much longer. He will be the one to look after young Jack. Peter will stay in Los Angeles for a week in Debbie’s house while Debbie will spend time in the big apple in Peter’s house. The plan is apparently perfect, a pity that the situation will not remain so for much longer. He will be the one to look after young Jack. Peter will stay in Los Angeles for a week in Debbie’s house while Debbie will spend time in the big apple in Peter’s house. The plan is apparently perfect, a pity that the situation will not remain so for much longer.
Debbie is a divorced single mom who devotes all of her time to looking after her son. Jack suffers from many allergies and to counteract them you need different medicines. Health insurance is expensive, and Debbie is determined to elevate her professional career, so she doesn’t have to worry about money for her family. The young woman holds an administrative role in her son’s school but in reality, she dreamed of being a literary editor. She has always been a great reader and she loves stories. She’s always reading and never really indulged in her dream, she’s just set it aside for quieter times. The opportunity to change her life permanently presents itself during the trip to New York when in Peter’s immaculate house she finds a manuscript of hers. It’s Peter’s book. Debbie chooses to read it and is enchanted by it. The circumstances of fate are favorable to her and by pure chance, she meets the editor of her favorite publishing house, Theo, in a club in the Big Apple.
Jesse Williams’ character has other plans for them. Between one kiss and another between Theo and Debbie, a professional story also develops thanks to Peter’s book. Will it be published and above all will Debbie be able to confess everything to her friend or maybe she will realize that what she has always felt for him is not a simple friendship? Peter is a kind and generous man but also very reluctant to show his true feelings. Only Debbie knows him, only she understands him and knows that he is not just a heartbreaker. Too bad that one night 20 years ago he changed the course of events for a long time. Debbie and Peter spent a night together and when Peter woke up, he decided that this was probably going to be a big mistake. Peter didn’t consider himself up to Debbie and feared that sooner or later she would ruin everything, so he preferred not to risk it and confessed to his friend that disaster was better avoided from the outset. Since then, the two have silenced their hearts and cultivated a splendid friendship story. Too bad that feelings slowly emerge in sweet silence. Will Peter come to understand that the life he has in New York is not quite what his heart desires? Will he realize that maybe he deserves the love he’s always dreamed of? What is certain is that he would be a great father to Jack.
You know when they say: the actor is just like his character? When do you create that incredible association between performer and actor that you end up associating with them? Here in this case the exact opposite happened. I hope better. It seems that the characters of Debbie and Peter were written with their interpreters in mind. You will immediately notice if you know even a minimum of the two actors, that their characters greatly resemble them. Debbie is Reese’s bubbly and Peter is Ashton’s sweetly awkward being. The film thus becomes incredibly believable, and the couple works very naturally. The acting of the two actors follows their personalities, they are incredibly spontaneous. The story grows in a very natural and concrete way.
As I mentioned before, this rom-com is a real comfort movie, one of those movies to be enjoyed on bad days. Do you know the days when you’re down in the dumps? Here these days this is the perfect story. It is a romantic comedy that Americans would define terribly “cute”. It’s the kind of movie a daughter can watch with her mother without feeling embarrassed, the spicy scenes are very few and well-constructed. They are not inserted for the sake of it but have their reason in the general content of the plot. The directing is appreciable, nothing to say. The photography varies from the warm, welcoming pastel tones of Los Angeles (the place where the couple will meet and therefore a symbol of their love), to the colder and more decisive tones of New York.
I can’t hide from you that if you are looking for a funny and unusual romantic film this is the right one. The fun kicks in from minute one and won’t let you down for the duration of the movie. And the story plays all on the distance between the two protagonists and as many of us said, they think they know everything about each other, but they realize that due to the distance, this is not the case. They are best friends, and they don’t want to lose this relationship but they know that in reality, the feeling that unites them is different, even stronger, and potentially more powerful. Reese’s wit dominates the comedy and delivers laughs throughout the film. Impossible not to smile and be touched by the sweetness of the couple made up of Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher. If you’re looking for the right movie for Valentine’s Day and you’re tired of the usual romantic comedies that are all the same and fairly obvious, here’s the novelty you’ve been looking for.
Little curiosity is related to the film, or rather to the marketing campaign for the film. Ashton Kutcher, husband of Mila Kinis, did not know Harry Styles. The actor who today debuts on Netflix with the new romantic comedy alongside Reese Witherspoon entitled Your Place or Mine stated during interviews done for the promotion of the project that he did not know who Harry Styles was. Or rather he knew the singer by name but did not associate a face with that face. A karaoke was organized at a neighbor’s birthday party and during the evening a boy sang a wonderful Abba song. Nothing unusual so far, except that that boy was Harry Styles. Ashton unknowingly turned to Harry complimenting him, shortly after a friend reminded the actor that the boy in question was Harry Styles. “Now it all comes back,” Ashton said. In short, a good figure. But the matter does not end there, Ashton Kutcher also added that if he met Harry Styles again together with other boys, light-eyed, dark, and cute as he is, he would not be able to distinguish which of the two is Harry Styles.
Your Place or Mine, the film directed by Aline Brosh McKenna, is the story of a twenty-year friendship between Debbie (Reese Witherspoon) and Peter (Ashton Kutcher). The two have opposed lives, Debbie is a single mom living in Los Angeles and Peter is a busy single living in New York. The two decide to swap lives for a week by moving into each other’s houses. It will be an opportunity for both of them to get in touch with different realities and discover unknown sides of themselves. Peter will discover what it’s like to parent a teenager and Debbie will open her heart to love again, after a long time. In May 2020 it was announced that Aline Brosh McKenna (who has already penned hits such as The Devil Wears Prada and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) would make her directorial debut in a film written by her and with Reese Witherspoon in the lead role. In August of the following year, Ashton Kutcher joined the cast.
Your Place or Mine Review: The Last Words
The film directed by Aline Brosh McKenna certainly does not shine for the originality of the script or the depth of the themes, but it offers a couple of hours of absolute lightness as well as the impression of going back to the comedies of the 2000s. I thought it was impossible to make a rom-com where the protagonists are distant and distant all the time, but Reese Witherspoon has shown me that nothing in love stories is off-limits. Your Place or Mine it’s really sweet, not cloying, tender, and funny. A true romantic comedy perfect for the whole family. It is a film that can be seen at any age, even the little ones can appreciate it. Your Place or Mine is the romantic comedy of Valentine’s Day 2023, there is no doubt.
What Worked:
- The perfect rom-com for the whole family
- Funny and believable
- Sweet and ironic
- The two actors have great chemistry
What Did’t Worked
- Maybe it’s slightly too long
