The Story of Us

Bomb Rating: 

The first thought that came to my mind when Pfeiffer appeared onscreen was that she's starting to look a whole lot like Ally McBeal, and I don't mean that in a good way.

When I think of David E. Kelly and Michelle Pfeiffer as a couple, I immediately get the image of a man scampering around the house pulling a rice cake attached to a string while his starving wife stumbles after him in desperation, trying to grab it.

I don't know about anybody else, but the first thought that came to my mind when Pfeiffer appeared onscreen was that she's starting to look a whole lot like Ally McBeal, and I don't mean that in a good way. Director Rob Reiner's tale of marital woe is punctuated at one point by Bruce Willis and Pfeiffer getting it on atop a kitchen counter. Willis peels off Pfeiffer's shirt, and instantly gets this look on his face like, "Damn! Who got the dark meat?" Really, if Michelle were a frozen chicken, you'd toss her in the beer cooler one afternoon, hope the brews stayed cold for a few hours and figure you got your money's worth.

"The Story of Us" is the about trials and tribulations of Ben and Katie Jordan (Willis and Pfeiffer) as their marriage goes through those machinations that one is only likely to see in a ninety-minute movie where bursts of emotion need to come fast, heavy, and furious. Not to mention in really cute set pieces, so that everybody in the audience, no matter how stupid, understands immediately that these two are immensely frustrated, furious at each other, but also really in love.

This film is very clearly "When Harry Met Sally 2." Reiner uses the same basic gags and the same basic style. The whole couple sitting on the couch talking to the audience thing was from the first film. And what exactly is it about Rob Reiner and his ass? Tom Hanks makes one comment about it and suddenly Reiner has an epiphany that his ass would make a wonderful metaphor for the meaning of life. Except that he forgot to call the film "Fat & Hairy."

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