April 27, 2002 -- "Life, or Something Like It" is another one of those movies about how you should live for today and not worry about the future so much. The idea is carpe diem, or seize the day, live in the moment.

Angelina Jolie of "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" stars as a Seattle television reporter, Lanie Kerigan, who has her gaze set firmly on the future, a network job and a trophy husband, pro baseball player Cal Cooper (Christian Kane of "Summer Catch"). She thinks her life is perfect. Then a street prophet named Jack (Tony Shalhoub of "The Man Who Wasn't There") tells her she is going to die in five days. When several of Jack's prophecies come true, Lanie decides she had better spend her last days doing what she really wants to do. She stops exercising, pigs out on junk food, and gets drunk.

The basic message of the film is a good one. It is very similar to philosopher Joseph Campbell's advice to "follow your bliss," and good things will happen. Some small parts of the film are moving and inspiring. There are also a lot of problems with the way the film is put together. First of all, the characters don't seem real. They are a lot more like Hollywood actors than real journalists. There isn't any real chemistry between the romantic leads, Jolie and Edward Burns ("Sidewalks of New York") who plays Pete, the cameraman. Shalhoub is good as Prophet Jack, but he is about the only interesting character in the film. Amanda Tapping of the "Stargate SG-1" TV show appears briefly in the film as a morning show hostess. There doesn't seem to be any character who has a genuine emotion in the film. They all just seem to be going through the motions. The story is anemic and the character motivations seemed quite arbitrary.

Lanie's interview with Deborah Connors (Stockard Channing of "The Business of Strangers") is supposed to be the big, dramatic, defining scene in the film, but it comes off very awkwardly and is poorly staged. The actors are all likeable enough, but they just don't seem to become the characters. Lanie's bimbo broadcaster act reminded me of the the Eagle's song "Dirty Laundry," the part which goes, "Bubble-headed bleach-blonde comes on at five. She can tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye. It's interesting when people die, we love dirty laundry." Lanie seems to be more of a caricature of a newsperson than an attempt to portray a real newscaster. Many of the characters seemed like sketches of characters rather than real people. While this film does touch on some worthwhile subjects, it is weak and ineffective in its construction. This film rates a C.

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