In a funnier world, Zoë Chao and Tig Notaro are starring in their own romantic comedy together. Meantime, in the real world, they’re ringers in support of Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, the ones running what we’ll charitably call “the show” in “Your Place or Mine.” No question mark on that title. None needed. It’s a flat business proposition, like the movie now streaming on Netflix.
Between Witherspoon, Kutcher and writer/first-time feature director Aline Brosh McKenna, we’re talking roughly 70 years’ collective experience in the rom-com genre. So why is this one so bleh? Is it because it’s Netflix, which has a weird way of encouraging discouragingly low expectations, fulfilled? Is it because the getting-together of the romantic leads is a foregone conclusion?
Hardly: Most rom-coms are foregone conclusions, interrupted by montages and usually building to a key scene in an airport terminal. (”Your Place or Mine”: check.) But every good rom-com makes the inevitable enticing with stuff money can’t buy. Wit. Fizz. Character likability. Amusing detestability. Some visual life and snap. Mugging that gets the job done. “A hundred or more hidden things” is how Vincente Minnelli described the secret to any film with staying power. Even if you stay with “Your Place or Mine,” it is unlikely to stay with you.
