And Pete should know, because he’s plainly the film’s standard-bearer of realness, having years ago lost a network job because he made a principled stand about something. But Pete, much as he likes to harass Lanie about what he sees as her meaningless perfectionism, swears up and down that oh no, Jack is the real deal. And immediately, she suspects that her cameraman and onetime one-night-stand, Pete (Edward Burns, who has recently informed Parade magazine that he’s “proud to be a New York policeman’s son”) has put Jack up to it. This is alarming news, even if you don’t believe in homeless seers, as Lanie doesn’t. Such deep-seated trauma makes Lanie disposed to the calamity that drives the film, namely, a prediction by a street prophet named Jack (Tony Shaloub) that she will be dead in a week. She’s jealous of her ex-cheerleader, upscale suburbanite sister and desperate for her working class dad’s affections (he was always down at the factory when she needed him, apparently). The movie’s only been rolling for a few minutes before it resorts to home-movie-ish childhood flashbacks to reveal that she’s an overachiever with good reason, namely, insecurities. She lives in a white-on-white apartment with her boyfriend the baseball player (the wholly forgettable Christian Kane), zips about in a silver Mercedes convertible, works out furiously at the gym, eats “nothing but lettuce,” and has her sights set on being network interviewer (her role model is a Barbara Walters-style diva with a rep for making her subjects cry, here played by Stockard Channing).Īnd yet, despite her “Diamonds Are Girl’s Best Friend” looks, the movie insists that Lanie is only superficially superficial. Pre-strike spot, Lanie is presented pretty much as a one-dimensional career girl: always flawlessly coiffed (with poofy platinum hair), and dressed in painful spike heels and pert designer suits, Lanie is quickly grinding her way to an emotional nowhere. But truth be told, she can’t really budge, given the formula she’s living in. Her trajectory is supposed to be from shallow to deep, or at least, unshallow. Happily for her, but tediously for you, these things - save for this three-minute adventure - are blandly generic. As Lanie observes, so very philosophically at film’s beginning, “Things happen, things you never see coming.” But here, in you-go-girl romantic-comedy-land, it gets Lanie a new boyfriend and a promotion. In real life, or something like it, such an on-air meltdown might cost someone her job. And so, while her crew and producers look on aghast - “That is one crazy chick!” exults one obeserver - Lanie puts on a bizarre show, balls-out adorable and blissfully shameless. The immediate impetus for her apparent breakthrough is “stress”: the night before, she broke up her All-Star pitcher boyfriend, started pondering the meaning of life, and drank too much. Jolie’s playing Lanie Kerrigan, an ambitious Seattle tv reporter who at this point has been assigned to cover the drivers’ strike. The big emotional breakthrough scene in Life or Something Like It features Angelina Jolie, wearing pajamas and a baseball cap, singing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” backed by a slew of bus drivers.
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