The Story of Us

(Universal)

Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer play a once-cute couple whose 15-year marriage now oscillates between frosty silences and rehashed recriminations as these self-absorbed whiners contemplate their compatibility in a veritable scrapbook of chronologically challenged flashbacks. American Beauty this is not -- even Pfeiffer, in her big crying scene, snivels like a bad imitation of Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar speech, and Willis, in V-neck-sweater mode, coasts through, a caricature of distress. Here love hurts all right -- it hurts to watch.