The Story of Us (1999)

Too much of everything

Admirable film.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Ben (Bruce Willis) and Katie Jordan (Michelle Pfeiffer) are married with two kids. They find themselves drifting apart after 15 years of marriage. After sending the kids away to summer camp, they try a trial separation.This wants to be 'Two for the Road' but it has no style. I'm not in love with that movie and this one is so much more inferior. It starts in a static depressing place that the movie never reaches takeoff speed. There is a manufactured feel to the whole enterprise. Their marriage in the various flashbacks seems lifeless and unreal at the same time. At no point do I feel an urge to root for the couple. Each spouse has their own circle of friends which they have a jokey time with. That doesn't work either.

The problem I had with this movie was that it focused so much on the worst parts of long term relationships. In the first half hour I must have had 10 or 12 minutes of couples screaming at each other, and another 15 of these same couples trying to make up. This was all covered over by some of the most melancholy love songs ever written.I'm in my 50's and understand the dynamics involved here, but just being pounded by the worst parts of relationships gets grating on the eardrums. We finally got to a good comedy scene about 40 minutes in, but it devolved into screaming as well. It must have been tough to do, but Rob Reiner even managed to put Betty White in a bad light.I mean, the movie is truthful and all. A lot of what happens is true to life, but taking all the worst parts of life and concentrating them in a movie this way..... Well, it got to be too much for me. It might work better for women.Great cast though.

This film is about a couple going through hard times in a marriage, and how they repeatedly tries to salvage their marriage.I was hoping for a romantic comedy, or at least a comedy. My expectations turned out to be entirely misplaced. The film features continuous tirade of arguments, screaming and crying. Amazingly, there is really no break in between. Every emotion in the film is negative, including the minor characters such as the attitude towards annoying tourists in Venice and the attitude to Bruce Willis' confidant. Though it can be said that the film portrays emotions very well, but seriously I look for escapism from reality when I watch a film.

Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer are great actors; there's no denying that. But even the best actors in the world can't breathe believable life into dialog that is overly flowery and complex. And this script is full of tongue-twisting speeches that Pfeiffer and Willis just can't overcome.In a way, the writing is actually pretty beautiful -- certainly it's far better than the tripe in most movies (and it's the only thing that elevates this much above a "Lifetime, made-for TV" flick). But it simply isn't the way that people talk. The dialog -- especially Pfeiffer's mouth- full-of-a-monologue at the end of the film -- is filled with unnecessarily big and non- conversational words and long, complex sentences that don't exactly trip of the tongue. Overall, that final scene was pretty touching, and the meaning of what Katie is saying is deep and important -- and ultimately, it's the only thing that makes the movie worth sitting through. But nobody talks like that. And then there are the scenes where the Ben and Katie talk to the camera, narrating the story. Again, if it was writing in a book -- "prose" as opposed to "dialog" -- I'd consider it quite good writing. But clunkers like "...maybe it was the stuff of life..." (that separated us) are so distracting that they ruin the flow of the movie. The ultimate point of Katie's final speech, and I guess of the whole movie, is that you should choose to be with someone because of the quality of his or her character. Amen. But neither of these people really exhibited a depth of character to make them endearing to viewers or to each other. And even if someone has a sterling character, would you want to waste your life with a person who can't stop yelling at you? Though the movie doesn't take sides, I personally found Katie far more annoying than Ben -- and her rigidity, coldness, and inability to really communicate made it pretty unbelievable that Ben would want to stay with her. Life is too short to stay with someone you bicker that much with, in my opinion. It's true that sometimes you can find yourself in love with someone who really pushes your buttons. But there was never really a sense of these characters being in love, so I certainly didn't find myself rooting for them to work things out.One might make the point that parents should stay together "for the children," but as the child of parents who argued a lot when I was young, and who now (divorced) say they stayed together for the kids, I strongly believe that parents don't do their children favors by doing that. I'll admit that maybe watching this sort of story was upsetting for me to endure because of that personal history. But from reading other readers' comments, it seems that not many people found this an enjoyable film to watch. (I'm not saying that every movie should make you laugh out loud, or feel better, or whatever ... but a movie like this is such a downer that it makes you want your two hours back.)I absolutely can't recommend this film if you have any other alternatives. If it's a choice between this and a rerun of "Full House," I guess you could give this a try. But if there's some way you can just watch the last 10 or 15 minutes, that's about the only part worth watching.