Ashton Kutcher Making An Acting Comeback, Teaming With Reese Witherspoon
Ashton Kutcher is making an acting comeback, this time he will be starring in a romantic comedy alongside Reese Witherspoon.
Ashton Kutcher is sampling life on the other side of the American dream in Your Place Or Mine, an upcoming Netflix romantic comedy about a Los Angeles native and a New Yorker playing “prince and the pauper,” switching homes for a week in a hopeless bid to prove their life is inexplicably made worse by familiar scenery. It’s a classic case of wanting a change of pace, perfect for someone like Ashton Kutcher whose last significant acting role was as dopey ranchero Colt Bennett in Don Reo and Jim Patterson’s The Ranch and not much else. The 43-year-old is joined by fellow rom-com vet Reese Witherspoon, in her first major comedy flick since 2017’s Home Again.
Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon play Peter and Debbie, two friends living on opposite coasts in the United States. He’s a Los Angeles resident craving the open vibrancy of New York’s nightlife; she’s a young mother from New York hoping for the distinctive calm of L.A.’s beaches. They decide swapping lives is the best way to inject some much-needed spice into the vapid humdrum of years upon years of routine, only to discover their dream destination isn’t exactly what it appears.
Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon presumably fall in love later down the line and realize their place is with each other. It’s a standard switcheroo a la Freaky Friday and Parent Trap, except with vastly more romantic undertones for our designated protagonists. The central message of Your Place Or Mine is obvious from the get-go, which is that — it’s not about the scenery; it’s about the people. Or conversely, it’s not about the house; it’s about the home found within. Either way, with two comedy vets at the helm, the film is poised to become another heavy hitter.
Ashton Kutcher joined the cast of Your Place Or Mine two months ago on August 3rd. Reese Witherspoon was hired about a year prior in May, around the same time Netflix green-lit two new starrers: Your Place Or Mine and the big-screen adaptation of Sarah Haywood’s The Cactus. The former was penned by another romantic comedy warhorse, Aline Brosh McKenna of The Devil Wears Prada and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fame; Your Place Or Mine also marks McKenna’s official directorial debut. The cast filled out around Ashton Kutcher and Witherspoon on Tuesday as Jesse Williams, Zoë Chao, Steve Zahn, Tig Notaro, and Wesley Kimmel are tapped by the streamer to handle supporting roles. Kimmel will be playing Witherspoon’s son. Aggregate Films, Hello Sunshine, and Lean Machine are executive producing; actor Jason Bateman and partner Michael Costigan of Aggregate are developing the movie as part of their first-look deal with Netflix. Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter represent Hello Sunshine, while McKenna hails from Lean Machine.
Shooting officially began on Monday, as per Witherspoon’s Instagram post commemorating her much-awaited return to her “romcom roots.” McKenna also shared a group photo from her first day on set, highlighting Your Place Or Mine’s mostly female cast and crew (no Ashton Kutcher there).
The last movie role for Ashton Kutcher was as Apple mogul Steve Jobs in the widely reviled biopic Jobs, two years before Michael Fassbender practically killed the part in Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs. After that, Ashton Kutcher had a cameo as fictional actor Simon Goodspeed in Will Gluck’s modern-day retelling of Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin, and Thomas Meehan’s Tony award-winning musical Annie. He followed up that up with a Danish documentary about Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov, where he played himself. Unfortunately, both are hardly roles. Your Place Or Mine is Ashton Kutcher’s first real movie in over eight years. The Cedar Rapids native was reported to have starred in two movies since Jobs — James Franco film The Long Home and B. J. Novak’s Vengeance — and yet no actual release dates were given. It’s safe to say both features are presently on hold.
Your Place Or Mine, starring Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon, is currently filming.
