Ashton Kutcher

Reese Witherspoon is a certified book lover, with a wildly popular book club, and yet her Your Place Or Mine co-star Ashton Kutcher, beat her in that ...

[friends-to-lovers romantic comedy](https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/the-10-best-friends-to-lovers-romantic-comedies-including-13-going-on-30), Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon play longtime best friends who live on opposite sides of the United States, NYC and Los Angeles respectively, but keep in touch all the time over video. During Debbie’s New York adventures, she stumbles on a hero of hers in the book publishing industry (played by Jesse Williams), whilst Peter enjoys quality time with her son in Los Angeles. Since the actor’s latest role is someone who deeply loves reading, the filmmaker gave the actor a ton of books to read ahead of the role. So it’s not exactly a stretch for Witherspoon to play a major book lover in [her latest romantic comedy, Netflix’s Your Place Or Mine](https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/your-place-or-mine-quick-things-we-know-about-netflixs-reese-witherspoon-and-ashton-kutcher-rom-com). [Aline Brosh McKenna](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr1), who famously penned beloved movies like The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses. [producer who adapts popular books](https://www.cinemablend.com/interviews/how-reese-witherspoon-brought-female-inclusion-behind-the-scenes-of-where-the-crawdads-sing) and starting her own incredibly successful and respected book club.

In preparation for playing two book lovers in 'Your Place or Mine,' Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon were given reading assignments.

And sometimes that brings you to realizing you shouldn't be a people pleaser, which is 27 Dresses. That idea that it's people going through something and sometimes that brings you to a zoo. We didn't have a lot of runway between the walkway and the end of the stage. In terms of rediscovering each other, the ember is also this dream of what they were going to be when they first met when they were in their 20s. But I think all of the movies, including Prada and Crazy Ex, always come down to the human emotion and what is underneath that. What you choose to do when you first enter the world is probably the purest form of your aspiration. Because it's about adults, because it's grown up, because it has scale, it felt really right for it to be the first movie I directed. ALINE BROSH MCKENNA: I went to New York to work on a movie and I needed a place to stay that was relatively inexpensive. Adds McKenna to EW: "I didn't know that Ashton would read all of the books I gave him. The other great thing about having been a showrunner was the years that I spent working so closely with actors and having my creative partner being an actor. One of them had an inscription to someone named Peter, so I decided that was Peter's book that she had kept when he moved." "With Reese, I gave her a bunch of books that I felt like Debbie had collected over the years — some first editions, some beat-up paperbacks.

Aline Brosh McKenna's ('The Devil Wears Prada') cross-country Netflix romcom shouldn't work given the leads' lack of sparks, yet has a strange charm.

Or if the characters were older — maybe that’d make it easier to buy into the idea that these two people are already so sure of what they want out of life, so experienced in the ritual of being let down by more titillating flings and affairs, that settling down with someone familiar might make noble sense. And Your Place or Mine is worth watching for that alone, this iron-willed commitment to the premise in full defiance of what the characters are actually giving us. Here she is, look at her go: showing up to her seminar with a backpack and new school supplies, practically huffing the scent of a newly-sharpened pencil, being all wide-eyed and adorably game for the joys of life, being completely absent of any kind of cynicism. When she and Williams’s publisher get to prattle their way through a handful of cute scenes, the movie finally lands on something: a counterargument. [romance](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/romance/) to watch! And then the backstories kick in and Your Place or Mine, which runs nearly two hours, gets distracted, pretending that it’s as worthwhile to watch Debbie chatting it up with Peter’s fab, New Yorkey ex as it is watching Peter try to play dad to Debbie’s perfectly well-adjusted teen. Your Place or Mine offers us a full-blown case for reverting back to the anodyne safety and security of the familiar, no matter the substantial downsides. When Your Place or Mine opens, Debbie and Peter get the split-screened, made-for-each-other visual gags familiar from old Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies, those cutely twinned shots of each of them lying in bed reading at the same time, bathing at the same time, ritualistically in sync in ways neither of them fully realizes. Played, respectively, by [Reese Witherspoon](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/kacey-musgraves-reese-witherspoon-talk-struggles-for-women-in-country-music-713278/) and [Ashton Kutcher](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/a-closer-look-at-ashton-kutcher-69773/), Debbie and Peter are long-time friends. Debbie’s headed to New York for a week-long seminar (she’s trying to abandon her love of the literary arts in favor of a more practical job that pays more), and it’s supposed to be an occasion for her and her bestie to reunite. Each of these people (one more than the other, owing to a certain unevenness at the heart of the movie) has to choose between the genuine but uncertain chemistry that enters their lives — a real, tactile, tingly sexual spark — or the chance to return to their shared, multi-decade past, to the person that they know will never leave them because they’ve always already been there. He lives in a steely Brooklyn apartment with a view of Manhattan that’s furnished with a stove he’s never used, cutlery that’s never been opened, and a despairing lack of tchotchkes — there is not so much as a photo of himself or anyone he loves in plain sight.