This is My Superbowl

For Valentine's Day this year, Hubs and I did what we do best: we went to the movies. ICYMI, Titanic is back in theaters in 3D 4k and it looks incredible. If your idea of romance is watching 1500 people die horribly, I definitely recommend checking it out.

We're both big into Super Bowl Sunday, but for different reasons: he gets the chance to hang out with men and talk about sports, and I get a chance to watch the Puppy Bowl and a rom-com. Everybody wins! This year, the obvious choice was the new Reese Witherspoon-Ashton Kutcher comeback vehicle Your Place or Mine.

As this movie starts, it's 2003, and Debbie (Witherspoon) and Peter (Kutcher) are hooking up for the first time. They can barely stop talking long enough to kiss, and it looks like the beginning of a relationship with real potential. 20 years later, Debbie and Peter are still talking, but now it's on Facetime each morning as they get ready for work on opposite sides of the country. Debbie is still living in her charming, overcrowded L.A. bungalow, while Peter lives in a sterile NYC apartment that screams money. Debbie is about to leave her preteen son for the first time to visit Peter in New York, and to finish a professional course. When her childcare falls through, Peter offers to switch houses with her for the week. "You need help, and I'm coming, and that's that," Peter says, in one of many split-screen phone calls. It's a simple declaration of friendship, but in it I could hear the power of their connection. Would a week in each other's lives convince them they could be more?

When the opening credits started to roll for this movie, I got very excited to see that it was written and directed by Aline Brosh-McKenna, who wrote Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It's a hilariously messy hour-long exploration of mental illness and sexuality that also included at least two musical numbers per episode; it's bizarre and it shouldn't exist and I love it. C Ex-G alums Rachel Bloom and Vella Lovell make appearances, with Steve Zahn, Tig Notaro, and Zoe Chao rounding out the supporting cast of quirky, idiosyncratic characters. The jokes come hard and fast, and I got a lot of chuckles out of the first part of the movie. But once the movie settles into exploring Peter and Debbie's reactions to their new circumstances, the story started to drag.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: rom-coms do not need to be two hours. Peter has the far more interesting arc, as no one could believe for one second that Debbie might give up her home in L.A. and her life with her son in order to live an upscale New York lifestyle. The whole side plot with Jesse Williams could have been cut, which is painful to say because he's a smoking hot book editor and I could have watched him read for hours. Witherspoon and Kutcher deliver their snappy dialogue with ease, but the movie keeps them apart until the final scene and they don't have time to develop the physical chemistry that convinces the audience that they belong together. Neither character really examines what it would mean for the two of them to transition their relationship into something more intimate. That's even more frustrating because I bought into the strength of their friendship. If they both value this relationship, shouldn't they take some time to decide if they want to risk what they have for something that might not work?

Reese and Ashton look great, and there's plenty to please in their performances. The side characters were fun, and I enjoyed most of the dialogue and set-ups. This is worth a watch, but it didn't quite live up to the promise I was hoping for.

Anyway, here's a delightfully NSFW clip from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.