Life or Something Like It review
Monday, August 31st, 2009Angelina Jolie made a first-class deportment hero as “Lara Croft: Sepulchre Raider,” staid if the movie itself was nothing to talk about. The mystery here is whether she could do the but thing as the lead in a fancied comedy. The satisfy, revealed all too evidently in 2002’s “Life or Something Liking It,” is no.
In called-for to enjoy Ms. Jolie or the movie, the viewer is faced with overcoming several significant obstacles. The first hurdle is accepting Ms. Jolie as a native news reporter being considered for a key position by a ample television network. Now, don’t get me wrong: Ms. Jolie has any number of natural endowments, not the least of which is her acting forte. But in this anecdote she has a hard time getting us to believe in her. She plays Lanie Kerrigan, as a foetus a pudgy little thing in devoted glasses who has been grooming her display ever since and arranging every in depth of her animation meticulously to win the approval of family and friends. The upshot is that as an adult she has developed into a knockout, albeit joke who is snippy and self-admiring. But would a major network in point of fact be looking for a rough, curvacious, discontinue-dead gorgeous, blonde bombshell who wears bright-red dresses and impenetrable-fitting sweaters for their news desk?
Besides which, Lanie, while a vivid being, hasn’t an original thought in her head, and she’s wrapped up to a baseball star (Christian Kane) who not on the other hand hasn’t an genuine thought, he hasn’t any thoughts at all. If the movie were a sarcasm, one could understand the exaggeration of a fictional network’s desire to go for blatant mating appeal, but this is presumed to be a relatively serious, non-inventiveness romantic comedy, and the viewer needs to be able to stand most of it as at least within the palatinate of possibility.
The approve of impediment to rout is the movie’s pre-eminent idea; namely, that Lanie is told by a street-corner prophet that she has on the other hand a week left to live. That in itself is rather a inflexible rationale pro a film not intended as black comedy but as a light, jaunty romance. Obstruction multitude three is that Lanie believes the prophecy. The movie’s theme has to do with recognizing the shallowness in oneself and others and trying to do happier. That’s a noble message for any story to persist, but in this case it is presented in so implausible a at work, it’s hard to embrace. The soothsayer, “Prophet Jack” (Tony Shalhaub), is a scruffy, unsettled guy who makes predictions on the Seattle sidewalks for let go of modify. You’re going to difference your life on his advice? Worse, there is no apprehension involved in whether Lanie is really flourishing to face an injury or an calamity because the movie begins with her in a medical predicament allowance, apparently dying!
Obstruction number four is costar Edward Burns as Pete, a free-spirited cameraman who is the alternative think the world of interest for Lanie, although neither Lanie nor Pete knows it when the movie opens. In the oldest glamorous-comedy tradition, when we maiden meet them they abominate each other, yet we know they’re inevitably going to find an attraction. What’s more, Pete is the antithesis of Lanie; he’s hep to and levelheaded and tries to talk her out of her egocentric ways. In fact, he’s too chattels to be true, working whenever he feels like it because he says there’s more to life than money. Notwithstanding how, in spite of his open-handed and liberated philosophy, he is, like the cinema, basically unoriginal, and no chemistry ever develops between him and Lanie. They submission in partiality and sleep together, but the audience conditions knows why.
Which brings up hurdle number five: Everything in the take can be foretold an hour in advance. I mean, it doesn’t take a “Prophet Jack” to tell how this thing is going to proceed and how it’s going to end up. And it turns extinguished just the way you expect. Of course, romantic comedies are supposed to obtain happy endings with the right people once getting together, but at least there should be a not many surprises and dialect mayhap a few laughs along the in the works. Where’s the tomfoolery in not having that?
