Your Place or Mine review: Is the new Netflix rom-com worth watching?

After a frivolous drop in romantic comedies, the rise of OTT platforms saw a resurgence over the past couple of years, which has brought us Your Place or Mine, Netflix's latest entry in the genre.

Helmed by writer-director Aline Brosh McKenna, the near-two-hour film deals with some proven troupes, usual romantic comedy settings, and two actors who seemed to do nothing exceptional in the runtime.

It sounds exciting on paper to see Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon participate in a warm romantic comedy that involves the duo trading houses and Kutcher becoming the unintentional guardian of Witherspoon's 13-year-old child. Your Place or Mine, though, is largely forgettable in most respects. It does boast some good performances from both Kutcher and Witherspoon, but all the other elements seem either borrowed or impactless.

Your Place or Mine premiered on Netflix on February 10, 2023, just ahead of Valentine's Day.

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Your Place or Mine review: Outrageously simplistic and stale

Your Place or Mine has a premise that audiences have seen before. The film follows two characters, a slightly nerdy Peter (Kutcher) and the hard-working and sweet Debbie (Witherspoon), who had hooked up once years ago. Unlike other rom-com movies, though, they decided to not move forward with the relationship and instead remained best friends.

While the approach does seem fresh at a glance, this too has been done plenty of times before, especially when there are abundant foreshadows about a romantic relationship in the future.

In the present, Debbie is a single mother with a sweet asthmatic 13-year-old child, while Peter abandoned his dream of becoming a fiction writer (or so it seems) and is now a successful businessman.

The two live in separate cities and constantly stay in touch through video calls and texts. Your Place or Mine's consistent use of technology in the frame could be one of the only new things it did.

Soon, the plot unravels, revealing that Debbie would need to come to New York, where Peter lives, but she requires a caretaker for her child. Of course, Peter agrees to take care of that, kickstarting the plot of exchanging houses for a week. Again, this is something The Holiday, starring Jude Law and Cameroon Diaz, has already done before.

As the film approaches the interval, it becomes abundantly clear that Aline Brosh McKenna, known for her famous script of Devil Wears a Prada, has not put enough thought into segregating this entry from the ones that exist in the genre. As the plot takes shape, all the things that are supposed to happen do happen, leaving Your Place or Mine with very little excitement.

By the time the film ends, there's barely anything to take home. The interactions seem stale; the characters are done-to-death, and the plot is the most evident one. Barring one moment of dramatic tension in the final third of the film, which sees Peter and Debbie on automatic walkways going in opposite directions at the airport, the film also lacks substantial momentum.

As a Netflix production, things look very polished on the outside with good cinematography, an interesting score and smooth editing. However, in the end, it comes down to a film with little soul and little attempt at anything new.

Unfortunately, Netflix's Your Place or Mine is nothing to write home about. The film is now streaming on the service.