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THE STORY OF US Send This Review to a Friend
Despite the beauty of Michelle Pfeiffer and the commandng presence of Bruce Willis, my problem in watching the marriage of the characters they play fall apart is that I hoped they wouldn't get back together. That is hardly what's intended in "The Story of Us," as dopey a look at marital relations as ever escaped form Hollywood.
We're asked to take on faith that these were once two happy young lovers. But the only evidence we get is flashbacks to the sappy dialogue in the script by Alan Zweibel and Jessie Nelson that makes the characters seem like ninnies. Perhaps that's the way everyone talks in Los Angeles these days, but that makes the film even more depressing. Ditto for the dumb conversations that the supporting characters are saddled with, including director Rob Reiner's silly and gross observations in his actor capacity as a friend of the unhappy couple.
The view we get of Willis and Pfeiffer in their den of misery--they're also the parents of teenage children spirited off to camp--is that there is no reason why they should stay together. Their sexual relations are almost non-existent. They fight at the slightest provocation. Each would clearly be better off with someone else. Yet the plot is drenched with sentimentality about what was and what could be. After all they have been together so long and raised two children.
At the end, when they agree that they love each other and must try again, as you know they must in this genre of movie, they are ludicrously unconvincing despite Pfeiffer's long, tearfully joyful lets-make-it-work monologue to Willis as their children wait quietly in the car. Everything that has gone before indicates that in another hour or so, if that, they'll be fighting again. Quick, call the divorce lawyer. A Universal release.
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