Your Place Or Mine opens with Haley (Andi Eigenmann) waking up in an unfamiliar bed. She had a drunken one-night stand with Russel (Bret Jackson), and she runs way as soon as she realizes her situation. But it turns out that Russel isn't meant to be just a random hookup. Haley soon learns that her mother wants to put her in an arranged marriage, and it turns out that it's with Russel. The two are happy with the situation initially, but it turns out that being in an arranged marriage comes with all sorts of drama.
There are just two kinds of characters in Your Place or Mine. There are the main movers of the plot, who are all just terrible people undeserving of any kind of happiness. The other characters don’t really factor into the plot, because they exist solely to provide exposition. They are also terrible people. The relationship between these two sides of characters defines the drama of this story. The film works on a repetitive pattern: Haley and Russel get into a conflict because they’re both terrible people. While they are mad at each other, they talk to other people who reveal some form of exposition that suddenly makes things all right. Haley and Russel reunite. And the pattern continues.
All of the problems of the main couple basically amount to them not telling each other things, because again, they’re both terrible people. Haley learns practically everything she knows about Russel through the intercession of third parties. She keeps running into his ex-girlfriends, who are more than happy to tell her about how awful Russel really is. It’s profoundly stupid, especially as the story gets tied to the ridiculous situation that the characters are actually in. Russel, it turns out, is a playboy who always knew he was going to be in an arranged marriage. So were these all girls who were once under the same arrangement? Are they all angry that they didn’t get to be in a fixed marriage with the guy? It’s insane, and it’s all tied to a really odious view of gender roles.
This is a film that puts its main character in a position to apologize to her husband for taking pills to regulate her period. There is a stretch of this film that is mainly about how a wife should learn to cook for her husband. The film glosses over the fact that Haley apparently puts her college education on hold in order to have Russel’s baby. This is actually the story of a woman who loses all agency, Haley losing almost all ability to decide her own fate. What’s sick is that this story presents this as a good thing. The film rushes into a happy ending montage that pretty much ignores the complexities of every character’s situation.
This is all put together in a package that could be competent, but that might be a little generous. It would be a stretch to call it functional, as well. It doesn’t look bad, thanks to able lensing from director of photography Lee Briones-Meily. But the direction is flat and uninteresting. The acting is awful, but I don’t think the cast had a chance. Once again, these characters are terrible. They are completely irrational, just awful people. It’s hard to imagine a caliber of actor making these roles work. Andi Eigenmann, Bret Jackson and Andre Paras certainly aren’t up to the task.
Your Place or Mine isn’t just bad. At its core, it advocates a societal outlook that is downright reprehensible. The recent spate of Wattpad adaptations hasn’t been great, but this movie makes the rest of them look like masterpieces. This is an early candidate for the worst film of the year, and might go down as one of the worst films produced in this country in the lengthy history of our filmmaking. It is completely, irredeemably awful.
My Rating:
