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Verdict: A not-too-serious take on marital survival.

Details: Starring Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer. Directed by Rob Reiner. Rated R for profanity and brief sexuality. 1 hour, 38 minutes.

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Review: Ever wonder what happened after Harry met Sally?

"The Story of Us" is sort of the flip side of director Rob Reiner's mega-date movie "When Harry Met Sally...," in which Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan hilariously pondered whether men and women can just be friends. In "Us," the question is whether a couple can stay together after 15 years of wedded hit and miss.

Us is Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer. As Ben, a writer of romantic stories, and Katie, a creator of crossword puzzles, they're as good-looking a pair as you may see on-screen. But in Reiner's breezy, laugh a lot, cry a lot, big hankie of a movie, us ain't doing so hot.

Us don't talk so much, especially when the two kids aren't around. And when the youngsters are, communication usually descends into steely-eyed glances or nighttime shouting matches. You don't connect with me. You don't stop blaming me.

It may not sound like fun, but actually, at times, it is. Just like in the director's "The American President" and "When Harry Met Sally...," Reiner rarely keeps the camera focused on the intense pain of relationships teetering toward collapse. Ingmar Bergman has no place here.

Instead, we get a steady stream of sex jokes, butt jokes, guy and gal pals dispensing weak-willed truisms ("The Ten Commandments were easier to keep when you only lived to 35") and a lineup of therapists whose quacky musings are easily — and sometimes amusingly — made fun of.

"When two people go to bed, there are actually six people in that bed," one therapist spouts. It's an intriguing image, and Reiner scores by immediately shifting to an otherworldly scene that places his troubled twosome in their king-size sleeper with their parents (played by Red Buttons, Betty White, Tom Poston and Jayne Meadows). Both moms and pops naturally have a lot of marital advice.

But this gamesmanship, like so many scenes in this movie, ultimately takes the easy way out. Let's just say it will be a shock when a movie has the plucky White do more than spew profanity to generate laughs.

Moviegoers won't necessarily find answers to real-life marital woes in "The Story of Us." But they should be entertained. As when Reiner pops a visual montage of Ben and Katie's marriage on-screen, punctuated by the feel-good strummings of "Classical Gas."

It's their marriage quickly flashing before their eyes: childhood chickenpox, birthdays, euphoric dancing, bitter "I hate you's" and unrestrained "I love you's."

After all, love really does mean having to say you're sorry.

— Bob Longino, Cox News Service

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