Susan Granger’s review of “LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT” (20th Century-Fox)
The road to mediocrity is paved with good intentions – or, more succinctly, if you’ve seen the theatrical trailer, you’ve seen the funniest moments in the film. In her first foray into romantic comedy, Angelina Jolie (“Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”) plays an ambitious Seattle TV reporter who thinks she has a perfect life. She’s engaged to a slugger (Christian Kane) for the Seattle Mariners and her producer is submitting her tape for a network AM-USA job. Plus, she’s got this amazing platinum hair! Don’t dismiss the coiffeur because it plays a big part in Angelina’s allure here before her world goes topsy-turvy when she does a fluff feature with a homeless street seer (Tony Shalhoub) who tells her she leads a meaningless existence and has only one week to live. She’d dismiss the psychic’s prophecy but, when his other creepy predictions come true, she panics and is forced to question her shallow, superficial values. What’s the most important thing in life: love or career? Family or work? And just at this confusing time, she’s sent to interview a Barbara Walters-like TV celebrity (Stockard Channing). Redemption is obviously on the horizon, embodied by Edward Burns as a caustic cameraman who left a New York network job to relocate to Seattle to be near his young son. While screenwriter John Scott Shepherd and director Stephen Herek may have been inspired by the sassy, bantering romantic comedies of the ’40s and ’50s, they’re woefully in need of some originality here. The Jolie/Burns adversarial chemistry clicks but the dialogue is lifeless and insipid as is David Newman’s score. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Life or Something Like It” is a preachy, predictable 5, delivering a feel-good, positive message about the importance of relationships and getting our priorities straight.
