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The Story of Us

The Story of Us

List Price: $9.98
Your Price: $9.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: If this is your story, please stay away from me!
Review: You know how embarrassing it is when you're with a couple and they start to fight? Remember how uncomfortable you feel? Well, that's the feeling I got sitting through 90 minutes of Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer fighting in "The Story of Us."

The basic story is about a couple (Willis and Pfeiffer) who fight almost constantly. As the Willis character says, "Argument has become the condition for conversation." And boy do they do a lot of it.

Much of the film consists of flashbacks of various fights the couple has had. This begs the question: what exactly are they fighting about all the time? Who knows! The film never tells us. We see lots of shouting and angry faces and slamming doors, but we never really get any insight into who this couple is and what they're all about. Why are they fighting? Why do they still love each other? How did their kids turn out so great? These are questions that "The Story of Us" never bothers to answer.

In the midst of all the fighting there are several painfully unfunny scenes featuring comedic actors Rob Reiner, Paul Reiser, Rita Wilson, and Julie Hagerty. What's going on here? These are funny people! But not in this movie. In this script, comedy consists of lines such as "Don't you hate it when men leave the new roll of toilet paper on top of the empty tube?" No, actually I just hate it when screenwriters think cliches like that are funny.

"The Story of Us" was directed by Rob Reiner, who previously made the brilliant "When Harry Met Sally..." This film is nothing like that one. As I was watching it, I kept asking myself, "Who read this script and actually thought it would be a good movie?" Apparently Reiner, Willis, and Pfeiffer did. But they were most definitely wrong.

The only saving grace of this film (and the thing that keeps it from getting 1 star) is the terrific acting. Willis and Pfeiffer are very good. The script is horrible, but they work very hard to make the most of it. I wanted to learn more about these people, I wanted to understand them, I wanted to care about them. "The Story of Us," unfortunately, never delivers on those hopes.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good + ok
Review: I have seen, this good movie about fighting well, parents do fight (laugh out loud) well, Rob Reiner is a good, actor/director, i've, seen "Stand By Me" good, movie also "Misery" it's good, movie well, eventhough people kind of hate it oh well.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Dull Movie, drab DVD
Review: This is a movie about how difficult women are and how the secret to staying married is to put up with a lot of nonsense until they'll realize how spoiled they are. My wife thought the movie was about something completely different but I don't know what she said I wasn't really listening.

DVD Commentary by Rob Reiner is sparse - many long pauses, as though he really had nothing much to say about this film.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Ugggh!
Review: What an abysmal, horrid, depressing movie this turned out to be! I found nothing enjoyable or entertaining in this entire film.

This is the story about two people who, once in love, now remain in a marriage "for the sake of the kids," when in fact they truly detest everything about each other. You can feel the tension in the air, to the point where it appears that each one of the couple is listening to the sound of fingernails on a blackboard each time the other speaks, walks or chews.

The acting by Willis and Pfeiffer is, as usual, excellent. But that is the only decent thing about the entire movie. And the incongruous reconciliation at the end is so at odds with the rest of the movie, that it leaves you watching the credits, saying, "Whaaaat? "

Whoever called this a "Dramedy" has a much more esoteric sense of humor than I do. I found nothing funny, in fact, nothing of value whatsoever, in this waste of celluloid.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Horrid film!
Review: Insipid, gooey, feel-good divorce story brought to us by Rob Reiner, who is better at insipid, gooey, feel-good romances.

It's a rare film that actually manages to make Michelle Pfieffer unappealing, but by gum, this one does just that. In fact, the whole MARRIAGE is unappealing in this film, and since the film is about the marriage, the whole film is unappealing in turn.

How nice.

Bruce Willis should be commended (or get a Purple Heart, I'm not sure which) for giving up a seven-figure paycheck in some Bruckheimer blow-em-up flick to take on a more serious role, and he does his best to make it work. But even Willis' considerable charm doesn't save this trainwreck.

What made me most upset is the shallow, test-audience-driven "reconciliation" at the end, which drew nary a tear from your faithful reviewer. What will they give us as a sequel - "The Story of Us 2", in which this obviously screwed up couple ax-murders each other?

Folks, if you want to watch two hours of a married couple fighting, all you have to do is get married and you can see it for free - and you'd get to skip the cloying Eric Clapton song ("I'm sorry.....") Reiner uses about a zillion times.

Otherwise, save the bucks you'd spend on this and buy your spouse flowers.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great Romantic Dramedy.
Review: I liked The Story Of Us, it's a different movie, something never seen before we have always seen movies when couples are starting but not when they are ending. The acting is good, the script also, what damaged the movie was something that I don't know what it was but I felt something was wrong, maybe I should see it again I have only seen it once. It has a great soundtrack-Get Lost. I expect Rob Reiner to show us more movies like this and When Harry Met Sally in the near future, I'm not saying that this movie was as good as WHMS. TSOU was good, WHMS was excellent of course. It's a nice movie to see with your loved one.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Real life
Review: If you're about to divorce, watch this movie!

If you're about to divorce, don't watch this movie!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good Movie - 3 and a half stars
Review: Immediately upon watching this movie, I thought the formula Rob Reiner used was familiar to me. It was, Story of Us has similar type of flashbacks as the way When Harry Met Sally Did. The major difference is WHMS was about the beginning of a relationship, Story of Us is about the end of one. Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer both give excellent performances in their role as husband and wife. Rob Reiner was very good in his supporting role. This is one of those movies that will make you think about your own relationship. You will wonder if you are giving 100% or trying hard enough in your own to make things work (and from my standpoint, thats a good thing! ). Bottomline...this is a good movie, If you are pursuing a good drama, pick this up.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hilarious and touching
Review: True love, somebody once remarked, includes wanting to throw the furniture at each other from time to time. This film is about a couple who have grown tired of these tensions which have virtually extinguished the tender moments in between. Willis and Pfeiffer are excellent as would-be divorcees.

What really impresses me about Rob Reiner's work is how he can make immensely entertaining movies that are perfectly realistic. Of course the audience will find it hard to understand how little faults can ruin a relationship - we have not been living with these faults for the last seventeen years. So we can laugh about them most of the time. We can see how ridiculous and petty the usual squabbles-turning-into-a-massive-row really are.

Sometimes we stop laughing, however, when the memories which keep floating back remind us of what a precious thing is at stake: Those two have been sharing a life. And the painful moments are just as essential as the happy ones. We realize that they will never manage to get rid of this shared history.

This is excellent stuff, which I found more touching than hilarious in the end, but that is a matter of disposition; the film can be read both ways. You won't regret watching it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A few good moments marred by overall failure
Review: I think the reviewer who titled his/her review "could'a been a contender" summed this film up best. "The Story of Us" is largely an intelligent film and at times an interesting character study, but unfortunately it constantly manages to deflate itself.

Never mind the fact that the young Bruce Willis is denoted with a pony tail and the young Michelle Pfeiffer looks like she was a fashion consultant to the first lady in the seventies. Maybe Rob Reiner dressed his characters ironically.

The evolving tension between the protagonists is portrayed in a palpable fashion. In fact, it is portrayed so well that the final climactic reconciliation scene appears to be implausible. I can see where the film tried to insert the building blocks of reconciliation and failed. The husband finally manages to empathize with his wife and runs to her apartment in order to tell her that he has seen himself through her eyes. But from the beginning of the film, we already know that he loves her and that he'll take enormous strides toward reconciliation. What we don't see is how his wife can change her neurotic habits and how he can curb his offensive, short-tempered responses to those habits. In the end we get a surreal monologue about how the couple should stay together because they have character and because relationships with alternative partners will produce problems of its own. This is the basis for two people who've driven each other nuts to suddenly get back together again? I don't think so.

While the film is a formulaic failure, it does have wonderful moments. The scene in which the troubled couple encounters stereotypical, suburban, American tourists in Venice is hilarious. And perhaps the most astute scene is the metaphorical bedroom one in which the married couple is unable to make love because the incarnation of their parents appears in the same bed in order to nag them to the point of disruption.

I usually love Rob Reiner's work and I certainly enjoyed parts of this one. Unfortunately I came away from the film feeling that our troubled couple would really be better off divorced. This is the failure of "The Story of Us".


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