“Your Place or Mine” Review

Story posted February 20, 2023 in CommRadio, Arts & Entertainment by Adrianna Gallucci

There are so many things wrong with this movie that it’s hard to find a place to even begin.

Debbie (Reese Witherspoon) and Peter (Ashton Kutcher) have been friends since they spent the night together twenty years ago, but Debbie has hit a crisis in her life and needs to go to New York to complete an accounting course to support her son.

Debbie plans to stay with Peter in his place in New York while a nanny comes to stay with her (thirteen-year-old, might I add) son, but when the nanny cancels last-minute, Peter comes to Los Angeles to watch Jack (Wesley Kimmel) while Debbie goes solo to New York.

After swapping lives, the two realize that even though they’re best friends, they don’t tell each other everything. Peter strays Jack away from Debbie’s high-strung, helicopter parenting style, while Debbie inserts herself into Peter’s life and business in the city.

While in New York, Debbie discovers that Peter has written an entire book and feels the need to submit it to Theo, an editor that she met at a bar. Peter, then, takes Jack to hockey tryouts, where he gets injured and ends up in the hospital.

Debbie calls Peter hysterically crying and gets on the first flight back to Los Angeles (the first time the pair is onscreen together the entire movie), where there’s an “epic” love declaration in the airport.

Those press pictures make a lot of sense now.

There was no chemistry between Witherspoon and Kutcher whatsoever. It was more believable to keep the friendship storyline going because there was nothing to build off of romantically.

Most of their interactions were done on a split-screen, which was really annoying. Sure, the entire basis of the movie was that they swapped lives on the other side of the country, but the entire movie could’ve realistically been done in a FaceTime call.

Speaking of FaceTime, the use of technology in this movie was absurd. It was just really weird to watch Witherspoon use FaceTime and hold her phone in a movie, but also, it was more unsettling to watch Kutcher watch Witherspoon and another guy in his apartment via camera. Privacy, man!

How can you make viewers sit through 111 minutes of a movie just to show the two “romantic” interests together onscreen for the last ten?

This was the biggest waste of time that will have viewers begging for an hour and fifty minutes of their lives back.

Rating: 1/5

Adrianna Gallucci is a first-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, please email amg7989@psu.edu.