Okay, so you pop in to visit two of your married friends unexpectedly. You knock and there's no answer, but the door's open and these people are really good friends--hey, you were bridesmaid at the wedding after all--so you go in, only to discover that they're in the middle of a knock down drag out fight. They don't see you yet, so you tiptoe back out feeling like a miserable slime bucket for intruding. You try not to listen, but the words "hate" and "divorce" are being screaming so loud that they penetrate your brain, and you get the message that this marriage is having problems. So how do you feel? One, you feel like an idiot for walking in on people's private lives. Two, you feel like an idiot for eavesdropping on stuff that should never be heard by anyone other than the fighters. Three, you feel miserable, and did I mention, like an idiot? Finally, you vow and declare NEVER to be a voyeur to a fight again. I speak from experience, it happened to me years ago with two of my friends. And it happened to be me again this past weekend, when I went to see "The Story of Us."

In The Story of Us, Michelle Pfeifer and Bruce Willis play a married couple who separate for the summer while their kids are at camp. It's a miserable time for the couple as they alternate between caring for each other and tearing each other's hearts out in their all too frequent screaming matches. It's a miserable time for them. But not half as miserable as it is for the audience.

There are brief flashes of creativity in the film but for the most part the scenes are a compilation of one dose of misery scooped on top of another. Michelle Pfeifer might be one of the most beautiful women alive, but in "The Story of Us" her sultry poutiness stops being sexy and makes her look miserable.

To break up the fight scenes between Pfeifer and Willis, we have to endure some obligatory lunch scenes with the friends. Willis dines with his pals Rob Reiner and Paul Reiser, who talk smut, probably because they're men. Meanwhile Pfeifer endures lunch with her girl friends who talk about toilet paper. But although thinly disguised as part of the story, the collective lunch scenes are little more than celebrity cameos. In fact, it feels a lot like the recent comic hit Bowfinger, where Steve Martin produced a movie even though the cast were never together. Many of the scenes in The Story of Us feel equally random--as if the lure of witty repartee is enough to hold the audience's attention. It isn't. And while the writers obviously thought they were creating dialogue that resembled wit, they made it half way.

Trust me on this one, folks. Stay well away from The Story of Us. This film has the entertainment value of watching your grandmother fall down the back steps and braking her leg.