OxfordPress.com

Grade: B-

Verdict: Angelina Jolie holds this romantic comedy/weepie together.

Details: Starring Angelina Jolie and Edward Burns. Directed by Stephen Herek. Rated PG-13 for language, mild violence and sexual situations. One hour, 44 minutes.

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Review: As Lanie Kerrigan, the ambitious platinum blonde heroine of “Life or Something Like It,” Angelina Jolie looks more cartoonish than she ever did in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.” With her fluffy cotton-candy hair, mask of makeup and figure-hugging, cleavage-baring hot pink suits, she suggests Loni Anderson (the mid-70s/early '80s version).

Lanie is a feature reporter for a Seattle television station. She has, as she herself says, the perfect life: perfect fiancé, perfect apartment, perfect job, perfect friends, perfect body. Add to that the perfect job opportunity — she's up for a network position. To help her get it, her boss assigns her Pete (Edward Burns), his best cameraman. Unfortunately, Lanie and Pete have less-than-perfect rapport. Maybe it's because he says things like, “Do you know another cameraman on staff who can make you look like a natural blonde?”

Mostly, though, life is great — or something like it. Until, that is, Lanie does a human interest piece on a homeless street-corner psychic named Prophet Jack (the always reliable Tony Shalhoub). He tells her that the Mariners will beat the Broncos by six, that it will hail the next morning — and that, next Thursday, she will die. When the first two predictions come true, Lanie starts re-thinking her life.

Her movie, alas, starts going downhill.

Lanie's despair is funny — pulling out an old Social Distortion T-shirt, binging on Oreos and Poppycock (this film is very big on product placement), figuring a shower isn't worth it. But then the picture turns into a full-fledged weepie. While the idea of someone as edgy as Jolie in something so innately bland is certainly intriguing, the film can't rally from its TV-movie mentality.

One problem is writer John Scott Shepherd, whose only other credit is “Joe Somebody,” a Tim Allen vehicle that floundered in theaters. Another is director Stephen Herek, whose films include “Mr. Holland's Opus” (good), “The Three Musketeers” (entertaining), “Rock Star” (bad) and the live-action “101 Dalmatians” (badder than bad). They've delivered a movie with a split personality — one that's goes in more directions than the bouncy romantic comedy suggested by the ads. When it stays a romantic comedy, with Lanie and Pete sparring, it's amusing; when it gets serious, it gets soggy.

But then there's the unstoppable Jolie. We're accustomed to seeing her in cutting-edge roles. In this film, as a focused fluff-brain, she's wittily absurd (a much funnier version of Michelle Pfeiffer in “Up Close and Personal”). She knows how to make Lanie's eyes go blank, how to give her a fussy little walk. Her back-and-forth with Burns isn't exactly Tracy and Hepburn, but they work well together. (Actually, Burns seems to work best in a secondary role like this.)

“Life or Something Like It” is best described as a comfort-food movie, the sort of thing you'd probably watch at home with your fuzzy slippers on. However, Jolie gives it that extra little something that makes it worth checking out at theaters, especially if you're in the mood for something more comfortable than challenging.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)