“Your Place or Mine” is Netflix’s latest romantic comedy film, and its biggest achievement seems to have somehow gotten big names like Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher involved. The story is set around two best friends, Debbie and Peter, who had once hooked up some twenty years ago, and their present situation, which has them living at each other’s house for a week. Although this basic premise might still seem interesting, the rest of “Your Place or Mine” is just superficial with no effect whatsoever, and it is best to skip the film even for fans of the genre.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Your Place or Mine’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
After spending a romantic night together, protagonists Debbie and Peter could not keep up a relationship and fell apart. However, the two became close friends and continued to be best friends for the next twenty years. At present, Debbie lives in Los Angeles as a single mother, raising her young son Jack while pursuing a career in accounting. Peter, on the other hand, lives in New York, working with clients in some corporate setup. While Debbie had once been married and is now divorced from the father of Jack, Peter never settled with anyone and still seems to be in search of the love of his life. In fact, the film’s opening few minutes show Peter’s girlfriend of six months breaking up with him due to the man’s detached and unaffected nature.
While the two best friends do not seem to have met in a long time, one such opportunity is right around the corner as Debbie needs to complete a course in senior accounting down in New York. But the woman, who is very invested as a mother, worries about leaving her son for a week, especially since Jack is allergic to a number of things. Nonetheless, she manages to get their usual babysitter, Scarlet, to stay with Jack for the week, for there is an urgency to complete her course. Both Debbie and Peter are very excited about this trip, as they will get to spend a week together. However, trouble soon strikes when Scarlet forgetfully signs up for an acting job that requires her to go somewhere else, and therefore there is nobody to look after Jack. Taking the kid along is also not an option for Debbie due to his school and also because she would be working throughout the day in New York. Debbie decides to cancel her trip and tells Peter about it, but the man decides to do something else. Peter himself takes some time off his work and flies to Los Angeles to look after Jack so that Debbie can go to New York and attend her course. Over the next seven days, the two best friends live in each other’s houses and also get an understanding of each other’s lives.
How Does Debbie And Peter’s Plan Of Swapping Houses Work Out?
After the characters reach Los Angeles and New York, respectively, “Your Place or Mine” shows them understanding more about each other and realizing that there had been things the two had kept from each other, even though they would talk almost every day. Jack is very friendly with Peter, showing that the two had been well acquainted before, and the boy starts to share his struggles of pre-adolescent life with the man. Peter already had the belief that Debbie was too overprotective towards her son, and this is all the more established as he learns that she does not let Jack play any sports. Although the boy is allergic to basketball courts and to grass on football fields, he is very interested in playing hockey, but his mother does not allow him to do so as it involves risks and injuries.
Peter also learns of Debbie’s neighbor, Zen, who spends his entire day looking after plants and trees in Debbie’s yard. While Peter is initially shocked to see a man hanging out in front of the house all day, he gradually befriends Zen and learns that he is romantically interested in Debbie and that he has also been physically involved with her a couple of times. This is possibly the reason why the woman had not mentioned Zen to her best friend, for she seems to have kept any discussion of her romantic or sexual life away from him. We also get to know about Debbie’s romantic life in the past—after the romance did not work out between her and Peter, she met Jimmy, who was a mountain climber. She got married to the man sometime later, and they had a son, Jack, together. But the marriage did not last, as Jimmy always needed to be away on adventures and also wanted her company on these trips, while Debbie was more interested in staying home and being a mother. This motherly characteristic of Debbie is felt throughout the film, as she constantly keeps worrying about Jack, and her intentions in life are also driven by it. Although she had always wanted to become an editor or be around books professionally, Debbie had chosen a profession in accounting because this was a more stable field. Even the course that she currently pursues in New York is so that she can apply for a job in senior accounting and afford a better lifestyle for herself and Jack. Debbie is a character who prefers stable and certain situations in life to risky or temporary ones.
On the other hand, Peter is someone who prefers to remain unattached to things, situations, and even people. Even though his current employers offer him a stable role at his job, Peter declines the offer and prefers to be working with specific clients. This seems to be the reason why he ended the possible romance between him and Debbie twenty years ago, as he did not want to get attached to the woman. It becomes evident that both characters loved each other twenty years ago and now too, but Peter stays away. As it had happened, Peter had moved away from Debbie’s life for some time before meeting her again and seeing her pregnant with Jack at the time. The man clearly had emotional feelings for her, and so he could not bear to remain in the same city while being friends with her. Giving the lame excuse to everyone that he was scared of the earthquakes in Los Angeles, Peter had moved to Brooklyn and set up his life here. He, too, had a great interest in books and becoming a writer but never pursued that passion.
However, as Debbie soon finds out from the manuscript hidden in his house, he has indeed written a novel about a young boy dealing with his father’s painful cancer. While the film does not explain much about this, it could be that this novel was autobiographical in nature and that Peter’s father had actually died from cancer. He directly tells Jack, though, that his father abandoned him and his mother when he was a young boy and then died in a road accident. It could be that Peter lies to Jack and everyone else about his father and has written the actual truth in his novel. Or, it could also be that the novel was a projection of how he wanted his relationship with his father to be since, in reality, it was one of being abandoned and hurt at a young age. The father’s cancer could have been a good explanation for Peter’s character being so unattached and distant from everyone, but the film does not explore anything about it.
With Jack, Peter gradually shapes up into a friendly father figure who helps the boy with problems of all sorts. Peter initially tries his own corporate methods to help Jack win back his best friend at school, but they do not seem to work. He then decides to help the boy pursue his interest in playing hockey and takes him to the tryouts at his school, saying that he would tell Debbie about it only after she returned. “Your Place or Mine” builds itself around the shaky structure of the two friends doing something against each other’s backs once they are settled in their swapped homes, and Peter’s action happens to allow Jack to play hockey. On the other side, Debbie becomes friends with one of Peter’s innumerable ex-girlfriends, Minka, and learns through her that Peter has written a novel. Instead of talking to her best friend about it, Debbie decides to act behind his back and get this novel published. She happens to meet with the editor of a recognized publishing house, Theo and gives him a copy of the novel.
Encouraged by Minka, Debbie introduces herself as an editor, and Theo is impressed with her knowledge of books. There obviously comes a time when Theo asks to speak with the writer, and Debbie just keeps stalling it while also becoming romantically involved with the editor. She spends an intimate night with Theo at Peter’s Brooklyn apartment, where she has been staying, and Peter happens to literally watch this as Debbie accidentally turns on the video recording in the lavish apartment. Peter is more hurt and angry at this than he is appalled, and he, too, sets out for some lovemaking with an ex-girlfriend of his. However, he is unable to go through with it with Debbie on his mind, and as he explains to their common friend Alicia, Peter has always been in love with his best friend. Sometime later, Debbie also finds a hidden envelope in Peter’s apartment, which contains many photographs and mementos from their time in Los Angeles and of her and Jack. This clearly announces to her that Peter has been in love with her, and she is overwhelmed by this because she, too, has always been in love with him, obviously.
‘Your Place Or Mine’ Ending Explained: Do Peter And Debbie Become A Couple?
Debbie meets with Theo once more, and he offers her a job as an editor in an esteemed publishing house but mentions that he does not want her to work at his press because he wants to give their romance a chance. Unfortunately for him, Debbie now comes clean and says that she has just realized that she is in love with someone else, and Theo understands her situation. At the same time, Jack plays in the tryout hockey game at his school and suffers a bad injury, for which he has to be rushed to the hospital. Peter calls Debbie from the hospital and tells her about this, and the woman is very concerned and upset about the situation. Even though the doctor affirms that Jack is now in a stable condition with little fear of complications, and the boy himself talks to Debbie, she still stays upset at Peter for getting the boy into such danger. She angrily tells him to leave Los Angeles since she is returning home as her course and exam are now over.
The next morning, at the same time that Debbie arrives at the airport, Peter is there to catch his departing flight, and the two meet. They now confront each other about what they had done in each other’s lives behind their backs and have a terrible argument calling out each other’s faults. Just as Debbie is about to leave, her bag falls down, and a poker chip rolls out of it. This poker chip was one of the memorabilia that she had found in the hidden envelope in Peter’s house, and she, too, had a similar one back at her house. On the night of their lovemaking twenty years ago, the two had gotten drunk and played poker, following which they got intimate. Both of them kept a poker chip with each other to remind themselves of the night and their romance. Debbie now confronts Peter about this envelope of his, and the man finally acknowledges his love for Debbie in the most cringe-worthy fashion. The two kiss, making them a couple, and we are shown scenes from six months later when the two have moved in together with Jack at Debbie’s house in LA. Peter is now a published writer, and Debbie is an editor at an indie publishing house, while Jack continues to play hockey regularly. An on-screen text at the end reveals that even though marriage is a difficult affair, Debbie and Peter had a good life together.
