The rom-com renaissance is upon us, but sadly, ‘Your Place or Mine’ falls flat despite its star-studded cast. Read our full review:
is about the virtual chemistry between its two stars, but it mostly has to rely on their solo, standalone charms. Alas, McKenna doesn’t give either actor much with which to make a character. The film peddles the expected tropes: she’s overprotective of her son; he’s a lonely lothario clearly pining for real connection; she’s adorably dowdy; he’s a fading cool guy. That’s pretty much it. These tired, deeply gendered stock traits are not enough to build a movie on, and never have been.
But there are those glimmers. It’s revealed in perhaps too subtle fashion that Peter is in recovery, a meager glimpse of a rich backstory. Debbie mentions a drunken mother in one toss-off line, a suggestion of past darkness—one that might connect her to Peter’s struggles in some way—that the film chooses not to explore.
Instead, we watch as Peter gets chummy with Jack by flouting the rules of nagging old mom and Debbie embarks on a not terribly believable career adventure in publishing. In a rough sense, Debbie and Peter are stepping into each other’s lives in order to see the other’s perspective and thus realize that they are meant to be together. But nothing they learn is all that compelling.
Both Debbie and Peter have had any potential sharp edges blunted, so that these two sunshiny actors can play Nice People. There is little nettlesome tic here, little true stubbornness or vanity or intractable emotional issues. It’s all just window dressing, like the ugly little plants Debbie places in Peter’s barren, modernist apartment in a wan effort to spruce the place up—to, in vain, give it the feeling of something like life.
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