''Life or Something Like It'' is a 2002 American
romantic comedy-drama film directed by
Stephen Herek. The film focuses on
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
reporter Lanie Kerrigan (
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie (; born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, humanitarian and former Special Envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award ...
) and her quest to find meaning in her life. The original music score was composed by
David Newman.
Plot
Lanie Kerrigan, a successful reporter for a Seattle television station, interviews a self-proclaimed
prophet
In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...
, Jack, to find out if he really can predict football scores. Instead, Prophet Jack not only predicts the football score, and that it will
hail the next day, but also that Lanie will die in seven days, on the following Thursday. When his first two prophecies come true, Lanie panics and again meets with Jack to ask for another prophecy to test him again. Jack tells her that there will be a relatively significant
earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
at 9:06 am, which also happens. Now Lanie is convinced that she is going to die and is forced to reevaluate her life.
Lanie tries to find consolation in her famous
baseball player
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding te ...
boyfriend Cal Cooper and in her family, but there is little there. Her lifelong ambition of appearing on network television begins to look like a distant dream. In her desperation, she commits professional blunders but ends up finding support in an unlikely source: her archenemy, the cameraman Pete Scanlon, with whom she once had
casual sex
Casual sex is sexual activity that takes place outside a romantic relationship and implies an absence of commitment, emotional attachment, or familiarity between sexual partners. Examples are sexual activity while casually dating, one-night ...
. He introduces her to a new approach to life: to live every moment of her life to the fullest and to do whatever she had always wanted to do. Lanie moves in with Pete for a day, and he introduces her to his son Tommy, who lives with his mother. They spend a whole day together with Tommy. That night Lanie and Pete sleep together for the second time. The next day Lanie receives an opportunity for a job she always dreamed of in
New York. She asks Pete to come with her, but he declines, telling her that her appetite for success and fame will never end. Sadly, Lanie leaves for New York.
Pete meets Jack and tells him how wrong he is, as Lanie got the job which Jack foretold she would not get. However, Jack explains that he was right, as Lanie will never be able to get the job because she'll die before it begins. He also gives a prophecy of the death of a famous former baseball player in a plane crash. When Pete receives the news of the death of the baseball player, as foretold by Jack, he tries to call Lanie to warn her. He can't reach her, so he flies to New York.
Lanie - unconcerned with Jack's prophecy - interviews her idol, famous media personality Deborah Connors. Lanie realizes how petty the opening questions are and shares a heartfelt moment with Deborah live on air. The interview receives huge
ratings. The network immediately offers her a position, but Lanie declines, realizing that she wants a life with Pete in Seattle.
As she leaves the studio, a police officer gets into a conflict with a man, who shoots a bullet into the air. Pete tries to warn Lanie from across the street, but she is shot in the crossfire. Lanie dies in the operating theatre but is revived. When she wakes up, Pete tells her that he has loved her since the first time he saw her, and Lanie tells him that she loves him too. Later, Pete, Lanie, and Tommy watch Cal's baseball game, while Lanie (in a voiceover) says that one part of her has died — the part that didn't know how to live a life.
Cast
*
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie (; born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, humanitarian and former Special Envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award ...
as Lanie Kerrigan
** Amy Esterle as 15-years-old Lanie Kerrigan (uncredited)
** Marika Anuik as 10-years-old Lanie Kerrigan
** Ashlyn Morgan Williams as 5-years-old Lanie Kerrigan
*
Edward Burns
Edward Fitzgerald Burns (born January 29, 1968) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director best known for appearing in several films including ''Saving Private Ryan'' (1998), '' 15 Minutes'' (2001), ''Life or Something Like It'' (200 ...
as Pete Scanlon
*
Tony Shalhoub
Anthony Marc Shalhoub ( ; born October 9, 1953), is an American actor. His accolades include five Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, six Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Tony Award, and a Grammy Award nomination.
He played Adrian Monk in the USA N ...
as Prophet Jack
*
Christian Kane
Christian Kane (born Christopher Michael Short) is an American actor and singer-songwriter. He is known for his roles in the television shows ''Angel'', '' Leverage'', '' The Librarians'', and '' Into the West'', and the movies '' Just Married'', ...
as Cal Cooper
*
James Gammon
James Richard Gammon (April 20, 1940 – July 16, 2010) was an American actor, known for playing grizzled " good ol' boy" types in numerous films and television series.
Gammon portrayed Lou Brown, the manager in the movies '' Major League'' and ...
as Pat Kerrigan
*
as Andrea
*
Stockard Channing as Deborah Connors
*
Lisa Thornhill
Lisa Thornhill (born September 30, 1966) is an American actress.
Early life
On September 30, 1966, Thornhill was born in Hardinsburg, Kentucky. Thornhill's parents are J.C. Thornhill and Lynda Beauchamp Thornhill. Thornhill has a sister. Thornh ...
as Gwen
** Kasey Stevens as 5-years-old Gwem
*
Gregory Itzin
Gregory Martin Itzin (April 20, 1948 – July 8, 2022) was an American character actor of film and television best known for his role as U.S. President Charles Logan in the action thriller series '' 24''.
Early life
Itzin was born in Washin ...
as Dennis
*
Veena Sood
Veena Sood (born 21 November), is a Canadian actress. Sood is best known for dramatic and comedic roles in a career spanning more than 3 decades.
Early life and education
She was born on 21 November in Nairobi, Kenya. Her father was a doctor a ...
as Doctor
*
Jesse James Rutherford as Tommy
KOMO-TV
The majority of the movie was shot on location in
Seattle, Washington
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...
, although portions were also filmed in
downtown Vancouver
Downtown Vancouver is the central business district and the city centre neighbourhood of Vancouver, Canada, on the northwestern shore of the Burrard Peninsula in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. It occupies most of the north shor ...
, British Columbia. The TV station in the movie, KQMO, was actually real-life Seattle TV station
KOMO-TV
KOMO-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Seattle, Washington, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Bellevue-licensed Univision affiliate KUNS-TV (channel 51). Both stations share studios w ...
(the KOMO logo was altered on the set of KOMO 4 News and on several of KOMO's news vehicles, in addition to a few mic flags).
Several KOMO personalities make
cameo appearance
A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly ei ...
s; among them are longtime anchors
Dan Lewis and Margo Myers (the latter moved to
KIRO-TV in January 2005), weather anchor and ''
Front Runners'' host
Steve Pool
Steve Pool is a retired chief weather anchor. He began covering sports for KOMO-TV in Seattle in 1977 and eventually became the principal weather anchor for that station from 1984 to 2019.
Pool started his career at KOMO-TV as an intern while s ...
, and weekend weather anchor Theron Zahn. Other KOMO personalities who made brief cameo appearances include People Helper John Sharify and reporter Michelle Esteban.
Additionally, Vancouver news anchors
Pamela Martin and
Jill Krop, at the time both employed with
BCTV, appeared briefly in scenes shot in the BCTV studios.
Reception
The film received generally unfavorable reviews. As of October 3, 2022, based on 121 reviews collected by the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, ''Life or Something Like It'' has received an overall rating average of 27%, with an average score of 4.5 out of 10.
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Jolie's performance in the film earned her a
Golden Raspberry Award
The Golden Raspberry Awards (also known as the Razzies and Razzie Awards) is a parody award show honoring the worst of cinematic under-achievements. Co-founded by UCLA film graduates and film industry veterans John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy, ...
nomination for
Worst Actress.
Box office
The film was a
commercial and financial loss, grossing only $16,872,671 against its $40,000,000 budget.
References
External links
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{{Stephen Herek
2002 films
2002 romantic comedy-drama films
20th Century Fox films
American romantic comedy-drama films
Davis Entertainment films
Films about journalists
Films directed by Stephen Herek
Films produced by John Davis
Films scored by David Newman
Films set in Seattle
Films shot in Vancouver
Films shot in Washington (state)
Regency Enterprises films
Films produced by Arnon Milchan
2000s English-language films
2000s American films