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Life or Something Like ItRating:
Release Date: 20 May, 2003 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $13.48 You SAVE: $1.50! Cast: Complete Cast (6 total) |
Life or Something Like It Reviews
Shockingly Good
I rented this movie thinking that it was going to be a typical romantic comedy. But I ended up loving this movie. Angelina Jolie was perfect for the role. The movie was sweet without going way out of hand with the typical trashy sexual jokes that come every 5 minutes. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes romantic comedies or Angelina Jolie.
Jolie proves more talented than I thought
So I don't like Ed Burns (and this movie does very little to change my mind), and I have only recently begun to have a certain taste for Angelina Jolie. But I am a sucker for anything with Tony Shalhoub in it, even in a small but pivotal role he plays here. Shalhoub's versatility elevates almost any project with which he is associated from mediocrity to something a bit better. I found that to be the case here as well. What is an interesting concept is given a mediocre treatment. Lanie Kerrigan (a bleach blonde Jolie) is an up and coming Seattle tv reporter, perfectly primed for a plum network job (this is her ambition/dream). Teamed with cameraman Pete (Ed Burns), Lanie delivers standard reporting. One day she interviews a homeless "prophet" on the street (the excellent Shalhoub), who predicts various things that later come true. One of his predictions is that Lanie will die on a certain day in two weeks. Lanie comes to take his predictions seriously when all of the other predictions come true. Pete tries to calm Lanie down; Lanie has singlemindedly pursued her professional dreams at a high cost: she has completely lost touch with herself/who she is really. You get a hint of the "Lanie inside" in a scene in which she is unkempt, wearing her glasses, in front of her baseball player boyfriend, and he has no clue who she really is... and it seems she too has fallen out of touch with who she really is. In these self-conscious and introspective moments, when Lanie questions her identity (faced with the likelihood of her mortality), the movie hits a kind of peak. Unfortunately there is very little chemistry between Jolie and Burns, so their romantic spark lacks authenticity. However, though the "get up" (perfect make-up and ridiculous hairdo) is glossy and rather fake, Jolie imbues her role with a certain gravity that lends her character (and her going through the stages of denial and acceptance of her fate) believability. Unfortunately the film as a whole never quite hits its mark, and as a romantic comedy fails because it is not very funny and not very romantic. Jolie, though, does prove that she has much more versatility than I had previously given her credit for.
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