Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collection

---

Hooray for Hollywood's New Story of Us
Maggie Gallagher

Don't tell any of my pundit friends, but I think I'm in love with Rob
Reiner.

That's right Rob "Meathead" Reiner, who first irritated us all as Archie
Bunker's supercilious, self-righteous son-in-law on "All in the Family"
back
in the Seventies, who most recently emerged as the equally supercilious
spokesman for the "I Am Your Child" project, aka as "I am Going to Get
Your
Child Into Federally Funded Day Care" project.

Perhaps it's a mid-life crisis: me swooning as I leave the cinema,
after a showing of the new Michelle Pfeiffer/ Bruce Willis flick produced
by Reiner, "The Story of Us."

Call me crazy but ten years ago, nobody in Hollywood would have dreamed
about making a story like this: where the happy ending is not, the fresh,
liberating, new beginning a divorce provides, but the messy, loving,
idealistic, romantic choice to live by the same old, never-ending vow:
'until death do us part."

Ben and Kate Jordan do not meet each other's emotional needs. She is
excessively organized, he is fun-loving and spontaneous. They quarrel
about
small things, which in the echo chamber of marital discontent, have grown
to
enormous, absurdly misshapen proportions: If he loved me, he'd remember
to
add wiper fluid.

Anyone who has ever been married can recognize the dynamic. So can
anybody
who ever went to see Mrs. Doubtfire, a 1993 Robin Williams comedy which
treads the same he's fun, she's responsible ground with this enormous
difference: in Mrs. Doubtfire, as David Blankenhorn put it the happy
ending
is "the good divorce" "Boy and girl grow up by growing apart. . .In the
end,
their divorce, although painful, makes them better people and 'better
mommies
and daddies'" too.

Some in the media still love this old script apparently. "The Story of
Us",
which received the 1999 Smart Marriages media award as "the first MARRIED
date movie" has been universally, intensely hated by the prestige
reviewers.
"I couldn't believe how negative they were," comments Hara Estroff
Marano,
Psychology Today editor-at-large and member of the awards committee," But
I
loved it. I cried at the end. Everyone I know who was willing to risk
seeing it, liked it. It is very brave to tackle the topic the way it did."

In Hollywood making marriage the happy ending is still risky. The LA
Times
ran a column by Mimi Aviswhich went right to the point: In fact, 'The
Story
of Us' is a divorce movie, but one that lacks the courage to let its
sorry
twosome uncouple. It convincingly shows a man and a woman who are so
miserable together that even their children would probably endorse a
split,"
earning the LA Times the Maggie Gallagher 1999 Dumb Media award for most
cliches of the divorce culture packed into the smallest conceivable
space.

The New York Times' Janet Maslin predictably zeroed in on the
insufferable
bourgoise-ness of it all: "Dinner and dancing" is Mom and Dad's idea of
a
great way to spend their anniversary," she sniffed, saying such an
"arthritic" vision of marriage "could prompt even single members of the
audience to file for divorce."

The Washington Post reviewer, in another fit of Back to the Seventies
nostalgia was appalled by the insincere spectacle of parents seeking to
shield their kids from marital woe: Ach! Ick! Unclean, unclean! 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," he concludes.

Such overwrought reviews may account for the movie's failure, after a
quick
start out of the box office, to gain more steam: $22 million in three
weeks
ain't chicken feed, but it's not Titanic success either. See it quickly,
before it's gone.

---

| Smart Marriages Archive | New Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog | Older Divorce Statistics Collection Archive |