By Paul Byrnes
Your Place or Mine ★★
(M) 112 minutes
OMG, the chemistry between Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher. If it was any hotter, you could boil an egg. In about 36 hours.
It’s not their fault. It works on paper. Each has a huge following among Gen X-ers, who might be ripe for some romantic nostalgia. Each is at home with comedy and romance. So, what went wrong with this first-time pairing of two of the prettier stars of their era?
Witherspoon plays a single mother in LA who is best friends with Kutcher, based in New York.
Actually, chemistry is not enough, even when there is some. The old rules still apply – structure, structure and structure. This one attempts to tell two stories in two different cities at the same time, thus splitting the energy between Los Angeles and New York. Split stories almost never work. They rupture momentum and keep the characters apart.
This is further compounded by the characterisations. Witherspoon is Debbie, a single mum in LA, trying to protect her son Jack (Wesley Kimmel) from all the bad things, such as disappointment and hockey injuries. Jack is about 13 and allergic to everything.
In New York, Peter (Kutcher) is successful in work but not in love. He’s well-off, which satisfies one of the foundation blocks of romcom, but he’s repressed, joyless and fearful, same as her. That can be funny in a neurotic sort of way – think Woody Allen – but not here. It’s more like maudlin.
Tig Notaro and Ashton Kutcher in Your Place or Mine.Credit: Erin Simkin/Netflix
In the first scene, set 20 years earlier in Los Angeles, they hook up. After one night of wild sex, he pushes her away because he’s not ready for commitment. She falls for another guy and has a son, but that’s all behind her. She’s now Queen Sensible. She and Peter are best friends, albeit remotely. They tell each other everything in calls filled with sassy dialogue, like Hollywood writers used to do. Think Hepburn and Tracy in the 1950s, but not as funny.
Aline Brosh McKenna, as director, does not know how to make this pudding set. On debut after a successful career as a showrunner and screenwriter (she adapted The Devil Wears Prada), her direction is tentative, the pace flowing like treacle. She ignores some of the film’s best assets, even when the evidence is right in front of her.
Steve Zahn has a small role as Debbie’s neighbour – a lovestruck gardener. He does more in a few minutes to bring mirth than the rest of the cast put together.
I would have enjoyed a movie about his quiet longing for Debbie, but that would have upset the balance, and this film is “balanced” in terms of screen time, rather than script. Equal leads, equal time. Witherspoon and Kutcher achieve gender equality for the romcom – not an insignificant task – but it hardly matters when the film is so listless.
Your Place or Mine is streaming on Netflix from February 10.
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