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Rob Reiner has done the unfathomable: The accomplished director has actually made a film as bad as his previous career low North. With The Story of Us, Meathead blends top Hollywood talent with an irritating script to deliver a slow, torturously towering achievement in bad filmmaking. Not coincidentally, North author Alan Zweibel created this story as well.
The film doesn't immediately seem to annoy, opening with a monologue from Ben Jordan (Bruce Willis, The Sixth Sense) as he explains his idea of true love. Something about being married for sixty years and dying days apart from one another; I don't know. The film then launches into present day, where Ben and his wife of fifteen years, Katie (Michelle Pfeiffer, The Deep End of the Ocean), share a seemingly happy dinner with their two children. They play a game called "High/Low," where each takes a turn describing their best and worst moments of the day. It seems like the perfect family, with white, toothy smiles all around.
Once the children excuse themselves, we eventually learn that it's all a façade. Ben and Katie's marriage has been rotting from the inside for several years and, despite the approach of their anniversary, the two plan to separate once they ship the unsuspecting kids off to summer camp.
Katie explains to the camera – in her own monologue – why she feels her marriage to Ben is failing, drawing a strange analogy between him and the children's book Harold & the Purple Crayon. I'm still not sure I understand what she was talking about. But we all know the real reason Katie is unhappy. I've seen the uncut version of Color of Night. The girl just isn't satisfied, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, the kids go to camp, Ben moves into a hotel, and through a never-ending string of flashbacks we see how the two met and how things got to the point of dissolution. We glimpse a flashback montage of bedroom fights. We see flashbacks of happier days. We view another montage of hapless marriage counselor flashbacks. As if the flashbacks weren't enough, Reiner peppers the film with more monologues than Macbeth. It's almost like the guy is just scared to make a simple film in the present time.
To make matters worse, we are also introduced to Ben and Katie's friends as each meets their gender-specific cronies for lunch. He tolerates his two pals (Reiner and Paul Reiser) as they talk loudly about masturbation, colon exams and cyber-sex. She is treated to her chums (Rita Wilson and Julie Hagerty) bitching about their husbands without taking a second to either breathe or eat. Ben and Katie just sit and watch, amazed that so little has changed since the times of cavemen. And can I just say how annoying Mrs. Tom Hanks is? Paul Reiser, too. And why does Rob Reiner have to talk about his ass in every scene? Does he think he's Garry Shandling? Writer Zweibel was the co-creator of It's Garry Shandling's Show, so maybe he's the one with the ass infatuation.
After two weeks, Ben and Katie can't stand being apart from each other and make up excuses to call one another. Thanks to some dry-cleaning they meet for dinner, Ben as nervous as a pimply teen picking up his prom date, while Katie glows like an 11-year-old that just got her first kiss. Things go well, but the evening is ruined in the film's only legitimate comedic sequence. I won't ruin it, but I will say that it involves a bed, Red Buttons and Steve Allen's loudmouth wife.
If you have seen the film's trailer, you already know that the film is chock full of melodramatic acoustic guitar playing. It's fitting for a movie featuring two idiots that think if they just touch each other's feet in bed, all of their marital problems will be magically solved. Willis, who was so wonderful in The Sixth Sense, reminds us how horrible he was in the little-seen Breakfast of Champions, no doubt using his own failed marriage as fodder for his celluloid screaming. Pfeiffer, who hasn't been in a blockbuster since she wore a cat-suit, looks pretty and gets to have a bunch of different hairstyles because of the incessant flashbacks.
Exiting the theater after a screening of this film, I overheard one knucklehead saying that she didn't care for the language but was "happy with the way everything ended," as if there was any doubt that they would get back together. I'm just glad they were able to do it in under 100 minutes. I'm sure if the film went five minutes longer, Ben and Katie would be history.
Potential viewers should just stay home and argue. It's a lot cheaper.
1:35 – R for language and brief sexuality
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