Story of Us, The

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Pungent, funny, and surprisingly forceful.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Doesn't live up to the promise of its trailers.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

Another one of those high-gloss treatments of domestic strife that want to have it both ways. Sitcom-slick, melodrama-edgy.

Miami Herald Phoebe Flowers

Too easily, and predictably, resolves itself.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Disturbingly lightweight and emotionally risk-free.

TNT RoughCut Morgan Fouch

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

I scratched my head in wonder as to why this pair of one-dimensional characters couldn't find happiness in such a shallow story.

Film.com Peter Brunette

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

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.

Dallas Observer M. V. Moorhead

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Turns into a bogus drivel courtesy of a sitcom monster.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

Variety Emanuel Levy

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.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Overwrought comedy-drama.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Conspicuously short on the kind of texture that makes us feel we're watching real people living real lives.

Portland Oregonian Diana Abu-Jaber

Conveys an almost pulseless Nora Ephron style of homespun wisdom.

Time Richard Corliss

Mostly the movie is like the marriage: good casting, golden promise, yet somehow a grating ordeal.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Slick and glib when it means to be profound yet ruefully witty; its rhythms are pure sitcom, complete with emotional rimshots.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Merry witticisms collide with empty clichés, leaving these characters with little trace of realism.

Film.com Robert Horton

A skim-milk version of a yuppie romance.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

Never makes the Jordans' tribulations feel like anything more than yuppie angst.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

You can get all of this free on television any week, so why pay for it?

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

This is a second-rate Woody Allen midlife crisis comedy without the laughs.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The script...and Rob Reiner's direction...bristle with phoniness.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The wet blanket of undigested autobiography lies all over Rob Reiner's excruciating new opus about a marriage winding down into terminal atrophy.

Newsweek David Ansen

So bland and un-lived in you want to pour Tabasco all over the screen.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Fragmented and contrived, like a badly mapped-out scrapbook.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Audiences may want their own speedy divorce from this irritating collection of stale jokes, pointless vulgarities, and warmed-over clichés.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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.

Village Voice Justine Elias

Maudlin, irritating marital drama.

The New York Times Janet Maslin

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.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

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.