A movie, or something like it

>> Life or Something Like It is achingly generic

by MARK SLUTSKY

Surely the producers of Life or Something Like It could have come up with a more specific title. Life, as a descriptor, pretty much encompasses anything that could possibly occur in the movie—or any movie—and if that wasn’t general enough on its own, “something like it”? What’s “like” life? Not this movie, that’s for sure. It’s like nothing at all—as weightless and vague as its title.

The story’s a quirky one, in an entirely predictable way. A blond Angelina Jolie stars as Lanie Kerrigan, a Seattle TV personality who, we’re told, has a perfect life—nice apartment, baseball-player boyfriend, opportunity for career advancement and the like. Jolie gets teamed up, to her chagrin, with rumpled, down-to-earth Pete (Edward Burns), who, of course, she doesn’t get along with in your classic rom-com fashion. Told by a homeless street prophet (Tony Shalhoub) that she’s got a week to live, our perky heroine goes about discovering what really matters—love, family and all that.

If that sounds like fun to you, you might actually like Life or Something Like It. Anyone else will likely be bored silly. Sure, there’s a lot of movement on the screen, and some music in the background, and some bright colours, and it doesn’t hurt that Jolie’s kind of cute in a blond wig. But at two long hours, Jolie and Burns’ flaky little tango is achingly generic.
And while the talented Shalhoub has played some pretty bad roles before, it’s really pretty sad to see him as the soulful, preternaturally wise “Prophet Jack.” What’s with these all-seeing madmen populating the movies, always at the service of unhappy professionals?
Shalhoub’s character simply exemplifies the blandness of Life or Something Like It. It’s a frustrating kind of movie to review, for while it’s boring and uninspired, it’s still not bad enough to merit a passionate pan. It’s just impossible to have strong feelings of any kind about a movie like this, the cinematic equivalent of a test pattern. :

Life or Something Like It opens Friday, April 26