Movie Review: Your Place or Mine Is A Rom-Com Prime
Summary: Debbie and Peter are best friends and total opposites. She craves routine with her son in LA, but he thrives on change in NY. When they swap houses and lives for a week they discover what they think they want might not be what they really need. 4/5
Jennifer Lopez and Reese Witherspoon both having a rom-com within weeks from each other! Yes, it is 2003, life is good, and 90 minute films that humorously and happily end with the hot couple finally proclaiming their opposites attract¨ love are dominating. Frankly, I kind of wish there were more ¨easy to digest¨ films like, Your Place or Mine: coming out on Netflix February 10.
Rom-coms are a unique art form in that they are not really that artful. They are like the cheeseburgers of film: always good enough to satisfy and so simple in formula that to add too much or too little can leave you easily with an okay experience. Yet, a good rom-com is a marvel, and part of why I loved Your Place or Mine is that it beaconed my hope for not only a return of the genre, but an openness to having women in their 40s or 50s taking the lead and not being so fragile in their independence and self-stability.
From Salma Hayek´s Maxandra Mendoza in Magic Mike: The Last Dance to Issa Rae’s Mae in The Photograph or Ali Wong´s Sasha in Always Be My Maybe, another Netflix must-see, is that they join Jen and Reese in bringing about a ¨new woman¨ into the romantic world that is not often seen: the successful, genuinely fulfilled female. She not only has a good job, a self-care routine, and unwavering ambition, but she is also open to dating and finding a guy that will join her world: not erase it. Playing Debbie, Witherspoon goes back to her classic, acting toolbox of the dough-eyed sweetheart that has bigger, career dreams for herself but cannot do simple things like, find her jean jacket or know her son’s hockey tryouts. Yet, just because she is lost in jacket or choice of men does not mean she has no sense of self or intelligence.
If there is one classic, rom-com trope it is the ¨Who will she stay with?¨dynamic. Enter Ashton Kutcher Peter as Debbie´s oldest friend that has always been a slight mess, except with her. Peter maybe selfish and a little dim-witted, but if Debbie needs him to babysit, HE SHOWS UP! His competitor is the sexy publisher, Jesse Williams´ Theo, that I am supposed to genuinely believe, although he is perfect even in the bedroom, Debbie really does want the fun-loving Peter. Yet, despite their press photos, Witherspoon and Kutcher do have good chemistry and totally nail the friends to lover transition.
As someone that has dated their guy friends, eventually, I can say it is as casual and existential as Peter and Debbie make it. While you are having your typical life and occupational crisis, your mind ponders and your heart yearns for this person more consistently because you realize they are your constant, which, again, made me appreciate the maturity of this movie’s romance. Classic rom-coms thrived on the chaos of youth and lust-led encounters, but as your grow older or are like me, born with a personality of a 900 year old grandmother, you start realize constancy matters.
Real love is not simply about how someone excites you as much as calms you. There is a peace to the joy they bring you, and as you watch film, for all the missteps and mishaps that come for Debbie and Peter, especially when it comes to her son, Jack (Wesley Kimmel) there is also a serenity to their bond, as if nothing life throws at them is never not caught together. I liked watching that. It felt healthy, idyllic, and, in the end, adorable and funny.
