Review: Charismatic Jolie gets her turn in ‘Life’

Geoff Carter

Friday, April 26, 2002 | 10:05 a.m.

Grade: ***

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Ed Burns and Tony Shalhoub.

Screenplay: John Scott Shepherd and Dana Stevens.

Director: Stephen Herek.

Rated: PG-13 for sexual content, brief violence and language.

Running time: 104 minutes.

Movie times: http://www.vegas.com/movies/

If I could have any job in the world, I would be a professional Cinderella," Angelina Jolie's character says in "Girl, Interrupted." In "Life or Something Like It," a fleet and fun comedy from director Stephen Herek, she gets her chance -- she tries to get in as many dances as she can before the clock runs down.

Her only liability is that Edward Burns is Prince Charming, but when you put on those glass shoes, you take on everything that goes with them -- even some arrogant chump from Brooklyn. And wouldn't you know it? Even the caustic Burns is likeable, possibly for the first time ever, in Jolie's Cinderella story.

Jolie plays Lanie Kerigan, a Seattle television reporter with aspirations to Diane Sawyerdom. She is driven and more than a little shallow; she has a Marilyn Monroe hairdo, works out feverishly, dates a baseball player (Christian Kane) apparently just so she can be seen at the games, and is well on her way to a network job. Not even her cameraman and straight-talking ex-boyfriend Pete (Burns) are able to derail her.

Enter the seer. Tony Shalhoub almost steals the picture in his small role as Prophet Jack, a homeless man and expert prognosticator who predicts traffic accidents, earthquakes, sports scores and Lanie's death. "Next Thursday, you're going to die. I'm sorry," he tells her, then falls back on more important matters: "The Seahawks by six! Take the points!"

Lanie is immediately undone. She phones her boyfriend, who sleepily inquires after the prophet's gift for "E.S.P.N." She seeks out Jack's underground home in a leopard-print coat and high heels, and tries to buy him off with booze. ("Fortified strawberry wine!" he mocks her gift. "June 2001. Good month.")

Ultimately, she gives in to the prediction, and tries to flush the pain out with junk food, cigarettes and the music of Social Distortion. Punk Angelina is easily one of the sexiest creatures in film today, and when she dons the Social D T-shirt and literally lets her hair down, she becomes irresistible -- to a group of striking bus drivers she leads in a sing-along of "Satisfaction," to Burns, and to the audience.

Jolie is so fiercely charismatic in this role that she carries the picture through its weak moments, most of which happen in the wake of her romance with Burns. The film almost slows to a stop during another love scene, in which the principals don't kiss so much as dock, to the music of some sensitive singer-songwriter or another. Interrupting Jolie's punk-girl rampage is a mistake, but she snaps herself and the picture out of it before long.

Herek, best known for "Mr. Holland's Opus," does his best here, though even he finds himself chasing Jolie's carriage. "Life or Something Like It" is her big night out, and it proves to be one solid party.