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The Story of Us
Metascore
37 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 33 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 15 out of 33
  3. Negative: 13 out of 33
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  1. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    91
    Pungent, funny, and surprisingly forceful.
  2. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    63
    Disturbingly lightweight and emotionally risk-free.
  3. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Phoebe Flowers
    63
    Too easily, and predictably, resolves itself.
    All this publication's reviews
  4. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Foreman
    63
    Doesn't live up to the promise of its trailers.
  5. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Susan Wloszczyna
    63
    Another one of those high-gloss treatments of domestic strife that want to have it both ways. Sitcom-slick, melodrama-edgy.
  6. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    50
    Overwrought comedy-drama.
  7. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    50
    A squirmy mix of therapy-session slogans, pop psychobabble, and lots of crying, yelling and pouting on the part of its two stars, who appear in various alarming hairpieces.
  8. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Jay Carr
    50
    Conspicuously short on the kind of texture that makes us feel we're watching real people living real lives.
  9. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Paula Nechak
    50
    I scratched my head in wonder as to why this pair of one-dimensional characters couldn't find happiness in such a shallow story.
  10. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    50
    Turns into a bogus drivel courtesy of a sitcom monster.
    All this critic's reviews
  11. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: M. V. Moorhead
    50
    Snappily directed and edited, and there are moments of funny acting...but the script is all homiletic commonplaces, in quip form, and the wisdom is both stale and dubious.
  12. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Peter Brunette
    50
    Tries so hard to push all the pre-ordained buttons, and it's so anxious to be liked, nay, adored, that it left me sullen and uninvolved instead.
  13. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    50
    Wants to be an honest look at the problems that can beset a modern marriage, and be funny at the same time, but it doesn't have the skills or the temperament to pull all that off.
  14. Variety
    Reviewed by: Emanuel Levy
    50
    The stylistic devices used, which recall early Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky, get increasingly tedious, disrupting not only the sequence of events but also squelching audience sympathy for the protagonists.
  15. TNT RoughCut
    Reviewed by: Morgan Fouch
    50
    Willis and Pfeiffer do manage to keep you awake, but you're essentially watching your own marriage up there. And you don't need to pay a sitter to do that.
    All this publication's reviews
  16. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Diana Abu-Jaber
    42
    Conveys an almost pulseless Nora Ephron style of homespun wisdom.
  17. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    40
    Slick and glib when it means to be profound yet ruefully witty; its rhythms are pure sitcom, complete with emotional rimshots.
  18. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    40
    Merry witticisms collide with empty clichés, leaving these characters with little trace of realism.
  19. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Robert Horton
    40
    A skim-milk version of a yuppie romance.
  20. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    40
    Mostly the movie is like the marriage: good casting, golden promise, yet somehow a grating ordeal.
    All this critic's reviews
  21. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    38
    Never makes the Jordans' tribulations feel like anything more than yuppie angst.
  22. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    38
    You can get all of this free on television any week, so why pay for it?
  23. Mr. Showbiz
    Reviewed by: Kevin Maynard
    34
    This is a second-rate Woody Allen midlife crisis comedy without the laughs.
  24. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    30
    Fragmented and contrived, like a badly mapped-out scrapbook.
  25. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    30
    The wet blanket of undigested autobiography lies all over Rob Reiner's excruciating new opus about a marriage winding down into terminal atrophy.
  26. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    30
    So bland and un-lived in you want to pour Tabasco all over the screen.
  27. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    30
    The script...and Rob Reiner's direction...bristle with phoniness.
  28. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    25
    A sad-sack movie about the misery of a married couple who fight most of the time. Watching it is like taking a long trip in a small car with the Bickersons.
  29. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    25
    Audiences may want their own speedy divorce from this irritating collection of stale jokes, pointless vulgarities, and warmed-over clichés.
  30. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    25
    The movie's most inexcusable failing is that, despite all the flashbacks, we never get a sense of what this relationship was like when it worked.
  31. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Justine Elias
    20
    Maudlin, irritating marital drama.
  32. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Janet Maslin
    20
    Though it sets out to explain why this marriage is worth saving, The Story of Us could prompt even single members of the audience to file for divorce.
  33. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    20
    Folks, I really feel that seeing this one for you is the movie critic's equivalent of jumping on the grenade to save your lives. Send me medals.
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