Your Place or Mine

This film has great actors. The storyline offers plenty of opportunities. The acting isn't even bad. My 6 has been rounded upwards. The average is already below 6 while writing this review. This film is so dull and almost boring. Even the trailer is more funny than the entire film. Is it a comedy? Not really. Is it drama? Not really. Is it a romance movie? Perhaps for a few minutes. Is it dull? Yes and unfortunately. But why??? Is it related to Netflix quality control ? More and more, I'm inclined to think so. What a shame. Soon the updated Netflix access controls will kick me out. It feels almost a blessing in disguise.

A standard romantic comedy that takes place in 2003. Directed by writer Aline Brosh McKenna, who has written many popular romantic comedies, including "27 Dresses" and "The Devil Wears Prada," the film is a typical feel-good movie that is good for a lazy day on Netflix. Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher star as Debbie and Peter, who have been best friends for 20 years. They are opposites, with different lifestyles and personalities, and the movie follows their journey as they switch homes for a week. While the two lead actors are good-looking and charismatic, the film is let down by its bland script and lack of depth. The supporting characters, including Tig Notaro and Zoe Chao, are more interesting, but overall the movie is predictable and lacks any real twists or surprises.

The main flaw is the lack of chemistry been the two main characters, as others have said. This is undeniably true. It's hard to see why they would be friends at all, let alone prospective lovers. But even so, the film is perfectly watchable - and I've sat through many far "better" films which I've enjoyed less.

The individual performances (I could happily watch Reece Witherspoon reading a telephone directory) are perfectly fine, and in a sense the movie is carried by its co-stars: Zoë Chao, Tig Notaro, Steve Zahn, Griffin Matthews. And there's a lot of fun to be had. The film also portrays very clean, orderly, almost antiseptic New York and Los Angeles which border on surreal.

This film is like an after dinner coffee and chocolate; a relaxing, comfortable morsel but hardly main course stuff. I have no problems with easy watchable films, with a bit of humour thrown in. A "great film" it ain't; a pleasant way of whiling away an hour and a half it very much is.

I enjoyed this romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher...maybe because I am of a similar age? I loved the Cars heavy soundtrack and how it was tied into the storyline with Peter Coleman's father. I thought it was slightly different for a romantic comedy in that our two romantic leads have little to no time together in the whole film...and yet their love story is believable as they have been friends for twenty years! I did like the very Pillowtalk approach of having a split screen depicting the two in their very contrasting lives.

I enjoyed the humor and droll delivery of Tig Nataro and the quirky lines by Steven Zahn as the unpaid billionaire gardener/neighbor who is playing "the long game". "Begonias while you're Be-gone?"

But my favorite character was actually Minka played by Zoe Chao...beautiful with great comedic timing!

If you are a romantic comedy fan, I say give this a watch...you just might find, like me, that you enjoy it.

This one stays watchable thanks to a bright, buoyant-as-always Reese Witherspoon, but the writing and direction are on auto-pilot. For a film that pretentiously begins in 2003 and ends in 2023, there's very little actual romance or comedy here that grabs your sustained attention. The film just plods along in a familiar "can best friends turn lovers?" setup, the payoff of which is so minuscule and very 2003-like. Sure, it's not a film you'd ditch half-way, yet it has nothing that warrants a revisit - as is the case with most Netflix "originals." Also, a film like this would have actually benefited from having Kutcher and Witherspoon in the same space (to hell with those split-screens) a lot longer than 5 minutes tops. Hands up if you think Witherspoon deserves a better-written, better-directed comeback film! 🙌