In ‘Your Place or Mine,’ Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher Are Better off in the Friend Zone

One would think that Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher would be a rom-com match made in heaven, but the chemistry is less than sizzling in “Your Place or Mine,” the latest romantic comedy from Netflix. The pair star as Debbie and Peter, best friends of 20 years who have remained close despite their lives going in opposite directions. After Debbie swaps out her single mom life for a week in Peter’s swanky Brooklyn bachelor pad, leaving him to hold down the fort with her 13-year-old son, Jack (Wesley Kimmel), in Los Angeles, the BFFs start to see each other through fresh eyes.

Only a small percentage of rom-coms explore the wants and needs of people in their forties, and we see here how one thing most Gen Xers have in common is that they’re extraordinarily busy, either raising children, dealing with demanding careers, or juggling both career and parenting. Debbie falls into the latter category. In real life, Witherspoon, since her twenties, has been viewed as a woman who “has it all,” “all” being a successful career and a family, but this is hardly the case for Debbie. As a divorced mother whose ex is mostly MIA, she has a lot on her plate, and with her health insurance about to expire, she makes plans to head to New York to participate in an accelerated accounting degree completion program. The original plan was for her to stay with Peter, but after her babysitter (Rachel Bloom) bails for an acting job, he comes up with an idea for a switcheroo.

But before we can get to any of this, there’s a bunch of clunky exposition. First, there’s a fun flashback to 2003 L.A., during which young Debbie and Peter have sex after a poker game. In the present day, we learn that he put the kibosh on any romantic plans after that one and only hookup, but they went on to become best friends, and are so close that they talk all the time, despite Peter having jumped coasts. Video and voice calls are how they communicate daily. Yes, this is how a lot of people connect in real life, especially post-pandemic, but it becomes tedious to watch here, especially as these conversations mostly serve to fill us in on backstory. 

The fact that we don’t see present day Debbie and Peter meet face-to-face until the end of the film makes it hard for the viewer to buy into the romance that the plot is supposed to be leading up to. It is not that Witherspoon or Kutcher are bad; they both do a fine job with the material, but the script mostly works against them developing chemistry and building any real intimacy. The closest we get is Debbie reading a secret book written by Peter that she finds in his apartment. That’s one thing that bonds the friends — they both gave up dreams of working in the writing-publishing industry for mostly pragmatic reasons. But Witherspoon actually has a believable spark with Theo (Jesse Williams), a hunky publisher whom she connects with in the Big Apple.

The heart of “Your Place or Mine” is actually Peter’s relationship with Jack. The young teen has a laundry list of allergies. Because of this, Debbie has mostly taken a smothering approach to parenting. Peter goes in with a different plan, and that is to treat taking care of a kid much like how he manages his high-powered career, which does not exactly go smoothly in the beginning. In the end, he proves to be a worthy role model. Meanwhile, Debbie bonds with Peter’s ex-paramour, Minka (Zoe Chao), a sharp and lively fashionista who becomes her hype woman, and this creates an enjoyable and heartfelt depiction of a supportive female friendship.

Other supporting actors are less fleshed out. Tig Notaro is a gifted comedic talent, but she is miscast as Debbie’s L.A. pal, Alicia. Her acting style is too dry to play this character, who is mostly just there to be a sounding board. Steve Zahn, meanwhile, portrays a rather confusing character, Debbie’s neighbor, Zen, an independently wealthy guy who manicures her yard all day for free and sometimes gets busy with her in the bedroom. We never get closure for this oddball character. In fact, for a comedy that is nearly two hours in runtime, it feels rather rushed once it gets into the homestretch, then ends before it ever really gets started.  

Your Place or Mine” begins streaming Feb. 10 on Netflix.