The Story of Us

The Story of Us is director Rob Reiner’s heartfelt diary of a modern marriage, and it’s infuriating — a movie that wants to depict honestly the way couples can torpedo a relationship but that never feels less than glib. Clearly the work of people who should leave the 90210 zip code more often, it reduces real emotion to forced platitudes, and its disastrous ”happy” ending offers Michelle Pfeiffer selling out as both an actress and a character.

Bruce Willis, playing an aging Hollywood Peter Pan, turns in the subtlest, funniest work here — the scene in which he greets his son at camp and busts out sobbing is the film’s only truthfully out-of-control moment. Maybe his own problems have provided unnerving insights. Maybe he’s just acting. Whatever. It works.