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That's how most viewers will probably feel as they squirm in their seats during a showing of The Story of Us, yet another cathartic diatribe on the American home and hearth in crisis. A curiously unbalanced concoction of happiness and woe, the collective discomfort this film causes the audience is palpable.
Whereas Rob Reiner's contemporary fairy tale attempts to be a hip and bittersweet dissertation on the realities of marriage, the alternately dour and treacly treatise has all the subtlety of a hammer and sickle. And while The Story of Us is a commercially viable title, "Dial M for Manipulation" would be far more appropriate. Allotting the viewer a minor respect, the filmmakers stop short of employing flash cards to inform us when to laugh and cry.
But beware. Mr. Reiner's film, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Bruce Willis as the bickering lovebirds who have flown off course, can be quite seductive in its jerry-built sincerity. All the emotion-packed buttons are pushed.
Certain to be beleaguered by the fits of dissonance screenwriter Alan Zweibel portrays in his flashback-enhanced chronicle of Ben and Katie Jordan's 15-year marriage on the rocks, audiences will grasp at the overly precious moments of connubial bliss with the urgency of a Bedouin who has spied an oasis. But Reiner giveth, and then he taketh away. While his good director-bad director technique almost compensates for the lack of a more provocative story, it's obvious we're being set up; the seesaw modus operandi eventually grows wearying.
When first we meet the Jordans, they're having dinner; the very picture of domestic tranquillity. Doing the Quality Time "R" Us routine, Mom and Dad play a little sharing game with daughter Erin (Colleen Rennison) and son Josh (Jake Sandvig), wherein each family member is encouraged to elicit their high and low point of the day. Inevitably, when it's either Ben or Katie's turn, they offer something to affirm the family unit's solidity. But alas, it's a sham, has been for a while. The truth only comes out after the offspring excuse themselves from the table; with school soon out and both pre-teens off to camp, the Jordans are separating. They have until summer's end to tell the kids.
What follows is Messrs. Reiner and Zweibel's sophomoric anatomy of a marriage, replete with sitcom sensibilities to depict the peaks and soap opera melodramatics to represent the valleys. This includes ancillary players serving as a Greek chorus of kibitzers, their words and actions singing hackneyed paeans to the institution of matrimony.
A la Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher in When Harry Met Sally, but not nearly as funny, Rita Wilson and Rob Reiner are the ill-starred couple's best friends/sounding boards, Rachel and Stan. Happily, we are treated to much better supporting performances courtesy of Betty White, Jayne Meadows, Tom Poston and Red Buttons. The troupers appear in an all-too-short but sweet fantasy sequence which humorously demonstrates one Freudian marriage therapist's contention that there are always six people in bed: the married couple as well as both sets of parents. A truly inspired moment, the mini-lesson in comic timing is a nostalgic tickle. Even Pfeiffer and Willis seem invigorated by the veteran foursome, forcefully working the initially light-hearted scene to its surprisingly devastating conclusion.
But such moments are rare. Synthetic disharmony is stencilled all over this ready-made turmoil. And the prevalence of faux shtick is equally obvious. Of course, that's not to say that a foothold in reality is a prerequisite for this film phylum. For example, The War of The Roses, an outrageously black tale of marital collapse, is wonderfully beyond belief. Yet it has something The Story of Us is sorely lacking: originality.
Miss Pfeiffer as the detail-oriented crossword puzzle editor wears her off-the-rack character much too comfortably, without nuance or edge. And it appears that Mr. Willis as the loose-leafed comedy writer finally has the chance to do that agonising, misunderstood spouse he crafted so well way back in scene study class.
Reiner, whose heart-on-the-sleeve style can be effective under the right circumstances (Stand By Me, Misery), attempts a slick little bit of propaganda here. Knowing the script isn't exactly "Hedda Gabler," his mission is to cloak The Story of Us in pro-family aphorisms, proffering Mom and apple pie the way certain extremist groups wrap themselves in the American flag. Hence, though Ben and Katie are barely more than cardboard characters, solely out of principle we wind up cheering and hoping for them not to make their break-up final. In short, we are hoodwinked into compassion without even knowing if this couple should be with each other in the first place.
As if to underline the director's sneaky tactic, a maudlin background score with the words "I'm sorry" echoing ad nauseam throughout the doings is meant to give the impression that enmity among wedded folk is a cruel phenomenon with a life all its own. Woe is the careless couple who allow themselves to drift into the Bermuda triangle of marital discord. Thus, with such a fatalistic vision at its core, it's no wonder the tale isn't driven by the characters but by the paltry narrative instead.
But aside from the bits of anguish from column A and the smatterings of joy from column B that comprise this movie, we can't help but wonder what day-to-day life was like for Ben and Katie over the last 15 years? And how's things at work lately? Are the kids doing well in school? And say, how many years left to go on the mortgage? They're not having financial difficulties, are they?
Unless we are gods on Mt. Olympus, these are the sort of things we mere mortals need to ascertain in order to empathise with the lovers in question. Considering what little we really know about them, The Story of Us isn't much of a story at all.
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