Good romantic comedies have been a rare beast as of late. Lazy scripts, lackluster directing, and leads with no chemistry have plagued the genre in the last few years. Thankfully, every once in a while, a gem emerges. In this case, it’s writer-director Aline Brosh McKenna’s directorial debut “Your Place Or Mine” starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher that has come to resuscitate the rom-com.
Brosh McKenna is no stranger to romantic comedies, having written modern classics in the genre like “27 Dresses” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” as well as co-creating the CW’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” with Rachel Bloom. In her latest project, Witherspoon and Kutcher star as best friends Debbie and Peter, whose twenty years of friendship is built on a one-night stand and a love of books. They’ve both abandoned their literary aspirations, and, of course, they feel more for each other than they’ve let on over the decades. What will it take for them to admit it to each other finally?
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With a film like this, you know exactly where it is going to end up from the very beginning. The pleasure comes from the journey the characters take to catch up with what the audience already knows. This is where casting becomes critical. Witherspoon and Kutcher have mostly pivoted to television over the last decade, but they both have movie star charisma, and in Debbie and Peter, not only do they have chemistry to spare, but they’ve also found roles that play to their strengths.
When LA-based Debbie’s sitter flakes, she calls NYC-based Peter to cancel her trip to stay with him while she finishes an advanced accounting degree. This is par for the course for Debbie, who has resigned herself to her motto, “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” In an uncharacteristically altruistic move, Peter, who often refers to himself as “an unknowable piece of shit”, offers his place to her solo while he comes to LA to watch her son Jack (Wesley Kimmel). Even though they claim they tell each other everything, their shared secret feelings for each other are slowly revealed by staying in each other’s homes.
Kutcher shines as Peter, taking care of Jack, doing his best to channel John Candy in “Uncle Buck”. He’s a bit goofy, a bit suave, and far more sure of himself than he should be. Kimmel plays Jack with just the right balance between youthful naïveté and teenage angst, finding freedom with Peter that he couldn’t under his mother’s suffocated helicopter parenting. In getting closer to Jack, Peter is unable to stifle the deep feelings he’s been hiding from Debbie all these years, and Jack can’t help but see it.
Whenever this part of the film starts to get a bit too treacly, Steve Zahn (“The White Lotus”) pops up as Zen, Debbie’s independently wealthy neighbor who spends all his time tending her garden, or Tig Notaro (“Star Trek: Discovery”) shows up as Debbie’s friend Alicia, perpetually sipping a latte as she doles out deadpan mom advice to an often bewildered Peter. Both character actors know exactly how to calibrate the ridiculousness of these roles to bring laughs that feel earned, even if the moment may be overly orchestrated in the script.
Meanwhile, in New York City, Debbie makes friends with Peter’s ex, a socialite millennial named Minka (Zoë Chao, “Strangers,” who is doing her best Parker Posey in “Party Girl”) and finds herself attracted to Theo (a lowkey but charming as hell Jesse Williams, “Grey’s Anatomy”) an editor at her favorite publishing house. When Debbie discovers Peter may not have completely given up his dream to be the Great American Novelist, she makes some rash decisions that are ethically unsound and may help reignite not only their romance but the impractical yet fulfilling artistic goals they’d once had for their lives.
Here Brosh McKenna’s script explores the sacrifices many parents face, especially single mothers, in choosing the least risky options in order to ensure their child’s well-being. While these detours don’t completely derail a life, they can dull it. She deftly balances this exploration with how stifled Debbie’s son Jack feels in this overly safe life, showing that sometimes just a little risk can go a long way.
Along with the mechanics of her script, Brosh McKenna shows her deep knowledge of the rom-com genre with directorial flourishes like the use of split screens in Debbie and Peter’s phone conversations that call back to the classic film “Pillow Talk” starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Unfortunately, one direct homage to the film where the leads talk with each other while in a bathtub does not have the hot hot heat of the original film. This reveals the one modern trend “Your Place Or Mine” doesn’t manage to buck: the lack of eros or sensuality in contemporary cinema.
Sure, there is the meet-cute sex scene between Debbie and Peter at the beginning of the film. There’s also a sex scene with Debbie and Theo. Yet, despite all these hot people, and Witherspoon’s chemistry with both actors, neither scene is sensual. Where are scorching scenes like the split-screen bathtub scene in “Pillow Talk” or when Dermot Mulroney sucks the wedding ring off of Julia Roberts’s finger in “My Best Friend’s Wedding”? Given the right scene, Jesse Williams could absolutely pull something like that off. Yet instead both sex scenes are mechanical and rote.
Despite the lack of sensuality throughout the film, Witherspoon and Kutcher are more than capable of mastering the screwball style patter of Brosh McKenna’s script, which allows the decades of friendship to shine through, like in “When Harry Met Sally.” Also, like Billy Crystal in that film, Kutcher absolutely nails the final grand gesture of love speech, bringing forward a deep well of emotions that feel raw and tender, Witherspoon responding with an equal measure of tenderness. I got misty-eyed.
While there is still something missing in terms of sensuality, “Your Place or Mine” is leaps and bounds closer to the pinnacle of modern classic rom-coms from the 80s and 90s than most films that claim to understand the genre today. Both breezy and deeply emotional, Brosh McKenna’s directorial debut could be a leader in the rom-com renaissance the movies have so desperately needed. [B+]
