*½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Commentary B-
starring Angelina Jolie, Edward Burns, Tony Shalhoub, Christian Kane
screenplay by John Scott Shepherd and Dana Stevens
directed by Stephen Herek
by Walter Chaw A little like Forces of Nature in its dreamy, forced artificiality, Life or Something Like It washes out as an unwise amalgam of Broadcast News and Vibes. A love story without warmth starring Angelina Jolie as an ice princess and Ed Burns as his ol' smugly insufferable self, the film is a laborious trudge through faux-mysticism, heatless romance, and shallow philosophy–100 minutes of "carpe diem" that, because they're missing grace and life, lack resonance and purpose as well. Preternaturally sunny and too gutless to honour its stupid premise, Life or Something Like It inspires only one disquieting existential thought and that is the realization that whatever that self-aggrandizing idiot Burns made on this film is no doubt going to fund another one of his indies somewhere down the road.
Lanie Kerigan (Jolie) is a fluff-piece local television journalist with Marilyn Monroe's hairdo and the thousand-yard stare of the truly uninteresting. Paired for some hazy reason with ex-one-night-stand cameraman Pete (Burns), Lanie interviews hobo Prophet Jack (Tony Shalhoub, in an entirely different film) to find that the street corner seer "sees" Lanie's death "next Thursday." Convinced by Prophet Jack's surprisingly good batting average, shallow Lanie learns to gather her rosebuds while she might.
Life or Something Like It is another of those Regarding Henry/My Life, "once an asshole, now a disingenuous liberal sprite because I'm dying" movies that forgets to establish its characters as archetypes, content to pose them like Ken and Barbie dolls in simulacrums of formulaic existence. It marks its point of greatest desperation with not one group sing-along but two, compounding its sins by mangling Peter Gabriel's haunting Anne Sexton elegy "Mercy Street" in a confused attempt to shift its tone mid-stream. It's not that Life or Something Like It is offensive or repulsive, but that the picture is unremittingly stultifying. With nothing to say and no characters with whom to say it, the film is a lugubrious trudge through the bowels of "unchallenging pabulum."
Never funny, never clever, never smart, Life or Something Like It's most philosophically sticky puzzle is the extent to which its title can be read straight or with irony. (On the one level, it suggests an awareness of itself as a fiction and on a more caustic level it conveys a resigned admission that it sucks.) The film is enjoyable for the dozen or so who have never seen a movie before in their lives and for men and women hard-up enough to get turned on by Angelina Jolie's always-clad breasts and Edward Burns. Originally published: April 26, 2002.
THE DVD
by Bill Chambers Life or Something Like It hits DVD in a flipper from Fox. The first side contains the film in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with a screen-specific commentary by director Stephen Herek, the second a pan-and-scan transfer and the same yakker. I was quite disappointed in the image, which is soft, murky, and prone to banding and other compression artifacts, even though Life or Something Like It clocks in at well under two hours. A Dolby Digital 5.1 mix lends some heft to a bland selection of songs selected by the always-clueless Budd Carr. Herek sidesteps the film's lousiness in his commentary track, focusing on location issues, actor despairs, and the like. At one point he tells you they built a giant set to accommodate Angelina Jolie's place within the 'scope frame in an overhead shot without ever identifying his reasons for choosing to photograph Life or Something Like It (a movie of modest ambitions at best) in 'scope in the first place.
103 minutes; PG-13; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; Fox
