By CHRISTY LEMIRE, AP Entertainment Writer 

Il tema della fama contrapposta alla felicità è già stato esplorato dal regista Stephen Herek l'anno scorso con il film "Rock Star". Il termine esplorato è però errato, perchè in entrambi i film si è limitato a graffiare la superficie.
Lanie (Angelina Jolie) non sembra mai mettere in discussione la sua moralità - nonostante l'innata intensità della Jolie - e tutto si conclute in modo troppo pulito.

NEW YORK - "Life or Something Like It" features a TV news reporter with a seemingly perfect life — and a week to live. At the same time, she's forced to work with a cameraman she can't stand.
So guess what happens?
She learns to make the most of her days, and she and the photographer fall in love.
It's a pretty standard romantic comedy formula: Guy meets girl, guy and girl swear they hate each other,guy and girl engage in witty, sexually charged banter, guy and girl fall in love. Theoretically, it's the journey, not the destination.
But the journey in "Life or Something Like It" takes a detour through the self-help section of your local bookstore.
It's crammed with quick-fix psychobabble that comes straight from that segment at the end of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" where she talks about nourishing your spirit. I fully expected Dr. Phil to show up and chastise our heroine for making career and looks more important than love and family.
But our heroine, Lanie Kerrigan, is played by Angelina Jolie. And the camera is extremely aware of her knockout looks.
With her platinum Marilyn Monroe 'do (Lanie loved "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" as a child) and clingy Dolce and Gabbana power suits, she always looks flawless — even while sweating at the gym on the treadmill ... even when she realizes a homeless psychic may have been right when he told her she'd die in a few days.
Lanie's doing a feature story about Prophet Jack (an unrecognizable Tony Shalhoub), a Seattle street seer. Jack makes three predictions: the Seahawks will beat the Denver Broncos 19-13; it'll hail tomorrow;and Lanie will be dead in a week.
Because she's so self-absorbed, she doesn't believe him. She thinks Pete (Edward Burns), the cameraman she's stuck working with, told Jack to scare her. Then Jack's first two predictions come true.
So Lanie goes a little crazy, alternating between cramming Oreos in her mouth and telling everyone she loves them. Her character becomes more interesting when she casts off her perfect facade, lays around unshowered on the couch and blasts Social Distortion from the stereo. But her shallow, pretty-boy fiance, who plays for the Seattle Mariners, has no interest in helping her cope.
Pete, however, agrees to listen to her — reluctantly at first, but beneath his tough-guy New Yorker veneer, naturally there beats a heart of gold.
In the most unbelievable scene — the one that illustrates just how freaked out she is — Lanie shows up drunk on the air for a live shot at a transit strike. Dressed in a bus driver's uniform, her trademark coif a wreck, she asks a couple of softball questions before leading the strikers in a rousing rendition of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."
In reality, the people back at the station would realize the condition she's in, and cut away from her. But rather than getting her fired, the stunt makes her a star. She gets her dream job on the network's morning show, where her first assignment is to interview a Barbara Walters-style journalist, played with just the right egomania by Stockard Channing.
So does Lanie stay in Seattle with the guy she's just fallen for, or jet off for New York and stardom? And what about that pesky death sentence? Don't hurt your brain trying to predict the outcome.

The topic of fame vs. happiness is one that director Stephen Herek explored last year with "Rock Star." Actually, "explored" is the wrong word, because with both movies he's really just scratched the surface.
Lanie never truly seems to struggle with her mortality — despite Jolie's innate intensity — and everything wraps up too neatly.

"Life or Something Like It," a 20th Century Fox release, runs 103 minutes.

CHICAGO SUN TIMES - 26 APRILE 2002
'Life or Something Like It' 
BY ROGER EBERT

Someone once said, live every day as if it will be your last. 
Not just someone once said that. Everyone once said it, over and over again, although "Life or Something Like It" thinks it's a fresh insight. This is an ungainly movie, ill-fitting, with its elbows sticking out where the knees should be. To quote another ancient proverb, A camel is a horse designed by a committee. "Life or Something Like It" is the movie designed by the camel. 
The movie stars Angelina Jolie as Lanie Kerrigan, a bubbly blond Seattle TV reporter whose ignorance of TV is equaled only by the movie's. I don't know how the filmmakers got their start, but they obviously didn't come up through television. Even a viewer knows more than this. 
Example: Sexy Pete the cameraman (Edward Burns) wants to play a trick on Lanie, so he fiddles with her microphone during a stand-up report from the street, and her voice comes out like Mickey Mouse's squeak--like when you talk with helium in your mouth. Everybody laughs at her. Except, see, your voice comes out of your body, and when it goes through the air, it sounds like your voice to the people standing around. When it goes into the microphone, it kind of stays inside there, and is recorded on videotape, which is not simultaneously played back live to a street crowd. 
Lanie dreams of going to New York to work on "AM USA," the network show. She gets her big invitation after attracting "national attention" by covering a strike and leading the workers in singing "Can't Get No Satisfaction" while she dances in front of them, during a tiny lapse in journalistic objectivity. Meanwhile, she is afraid she will die, because a mad street person named Prophet Jack has predicted the Seattle team will win, there will be a hailstorm tomorrow morning, and Lanie will die next Thursday. They win, it hails, Lanie believes she will die. 
This leads to a romantic crisis. She is engaged to Cal Cooper (Christian Kane), a pitcher with the Seattle Mariners. He's in the field, he looks lovingly at her, she smiles encouragingly, the pitch is thrown, the opposing team batter hits a home run, and she jumps up and applauds. If he sees that, she may not last until Thursday. 
Meanwhile, she apparently hates Pete the sexy cameraman, although when Cal is out of town and she thinks she's going to die, they make love, and then we find out, belatedly, they've made love before. The screenplay keeps doubling back to add overlooked info. 
Cal comes back to town and she wants a heart-to-heart, but instead he takes her to the ballpark, where the friendly groundskeeper (who hangs around all night in every baseball movie for just such an opportunity) turns on the lights so Cal can throw her a few pitches. Is she moved by this loving gesture? Nope: "Your cure for my emotional crisis is batting practice?" This is the only turning-on-the-lights-in-the-empty-ballpark scene in history that ends unhappily. 
Lanie and Pete the sexy cameraman become lovers, until Pete whipsaws overnight into an insulted, wounded man who is hurt because she wants to go to New York instead of stay in Seattle with him and his young son. This about-face exists only so they can break up so they can get back together again later. It also inspires a scene in the station's equipment room, where Jolie tests the theoretical limits of hysterical overacting. 
Lanie's "AM USA" debut involves interviewing the network's biggest star, a Barbara Walters-type (Stockard Channing), on the star's 25th anniversary. So earth-shaking is this interview, the "AM USA" anchor breathlessly announces, "We welcome our viewers on the West Coast for this special live edition!" It's 7 a.m. in New York. That makes it 4 a.m. on the West Coast. If you lived in Seattle, would you set your alarm to 4 a.m. to see Barbara Walters plugging her network special? 
Lanie begins the interview, pauses, and is silent for 30 seconds while deeply thinking. She finally asks, "Was it worth everything?" 
What? 
"Giving up marriage and children for a career?" 
Tears roll down Channing's cheeks. Pandemonium. Great interview. Network president wants to hire Lanie on the spot. Has never before heard anyone asked, "Was it worth it?" The question of whether a woman can have both a career and a family is controversial in "Life or Something Like It"--even when posed by Ms. Jolie, who successfully combines tomb-raiding with Billy Bob Thornton. 
I want to close with the mystery of Lanie's father, who is always found stationed in an easy chair in his living room, where he receives visits from his daughters, who feel guilty because since Mom died they have not been able to communicate with Dad, who, apparently as a result, just sits there waiting for his daughters to come back and feel guilty some more. Eventually there's an uptick in his mood, and he admits he has always been proud of Lanie and will "call in sick" so he can watch Lanie on "AM USA." Until then I thought he was sick. Maybe he's just tired because he's on the night shift, which is why he would be at work at 4 a.m. 

Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Stephen Herek. Written John Scott Shepherd and Dana Stevens. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexual content, brief violence and language). 
Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - 26 aprile 2002
Jolie and Burns give 'Life' to drama 
By Mick LaSalle

"Life or Something Like It" has a premise that's hard to beat: In the middle of a live segment, a TV newswoman is told by a homeless clairvoyant that she has exactly one week to live. 
That setup, as well as the suspense that goes with it, takes this romantic drama a long way toward excellence. What brings it home are two stars who are easy on the eyes (Angelina Jolie and Edward Burns) and a screenplay that's actually about something. "Life or Something Like It" deals with the difficulty of striking the right balance -- between living for today and going nowhere or living for tomorrow and having no life. 
Along the way it dares to suggest something that women often say but movies about women never have the nerve to acknowledge: Sometimes a woman can't have it all. To reach the top of one's profession requires a lifetime commitment that entails hard choices and sacrifice. 
Jolie plays Lanie, a local TV journalist in Seattle with future network stardom written all over her. That's something we have to accept on faith, since Jolie doesn't make it easy. It's a weakness of Jolie's performance that she didn't bother perfecting her news technique for the role. Her delivery is far too slow for television, and her on-camera demeanor would register as snide and off-putting in any market. 
But Jolie brings other things to the table that are more important. First of all, there's the walk. She walks like trouble. 
She walks like some jungle creature, so when we see her, in a business suit and a confining hairstyle, we get the point before anyone tries to tell us. This is a woman whose ambition is constraining her. This is a woman funneling enormous energy into a life dream that may ultimately be confining. 
Before the street prophet (Tony Shalhoub) tells her that she has a week left, she believes her life to be perfect. She is up for a network job, and she is engaged to a star baseball player. In an early scene we see the glamorous couple walking out of a limousine, waving to fans -- and we know before they do that this is what their relationship is all about, this moment of standing there looking enviable. They don't look like a couple but like someone's idea of one. 
After she hears the prediction -- even though she doesn't fully believe it - - she starts to look at her life. This is where the movie could turn hokey but doesn't. There's no methodical self-examination and no moment of fake revelation, just a letting down of her guard. Jolie knows how to play a woman loosening up. Our heroine skips bathing, wears her glasses instead of contacts, smokes, goes off her diet and blasts music. This may be no way to live on a daily basis, but we understand. Something is coming apart, and maybe something has to. 
The movie contrasts Lanie's future-directed approach to life with that of her cameraman, Pete, played by Burns with his usual laid-back, decent-guy charm. Pete doesn't worry about getting ahead. He worries about finding pleasure in the moment, though the film ever so subtly suggests that his responsibilities might be slightly different if he were a woman. 
Director Stephen Herek has made some good movies ("Rock Star," "101 Dalmatians," "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead!"), though until now no one could ever have accused him of subtlety. But "Life or Something Like It" has a quiet confidence. It makes its points with economy and understatement, and that goes for the performances, too. 
Jolie goes through a lot in the course of the movie, but while Herek could have emphasized Lanie's transformation, he plays it down. Lanie remains the same person, as she would in life. Herek also keeps Jolie's mannerisms and eccentricity in check and brings out what is apparently her genuine live-wire intelligence. The result is a worthy woman's film and Jolie's best showcase to date. 

CNN.COM
Review: Jolie shines in up-and-down 'Life'
Formulaic comedy boosted by performances
by Paul Clinton
(CNN) -- "Life or Something Like It" comes roaring out of the gate as a smart and sassy throwback to those wonderful 1930s and '40s Preston Sturges-type screwball comedies -- only to sputter a bit in the middle. But a strong ending, along with a fine performance by Angelina Jolie, help the movie work.
Jolie goes platinum blonde in this, her first comedic turn. Marilyn Monroe may be dead and gone for lo these many years, but her hair is alive and well and sitting on Jolie's head. 
The actress plays Lanie Kerrigan, a feature reporter for a Seattle television station. She's poised for success and climbing the ladder with her exquisitely manicured nails. She has the perfect job, the perfect apartment, the perfect boyfriend and of course the perfect wardrobe. She's on the fast track to the fast track and nothing better get in her way. 
Well, there is one fly in her ointment. Her cameraman Pete, played by Edward Burns, has been there and back. He's tasted the big time in New York City and gave it all up to be near his son, who came to the Northwest with his ex-wife. His values are the exact opposite of Kerrigan's: family, roots, commitment and stability. She finds happiness in the trivial and the superficial. They fight like cats and dogs. 
Of course, they fall in love. If that spoils the film for you, you don't get out enough. 
One day while on general assignment Kerrigan and Pete come across a homeless man, a self-proclaimed a prophet named Jack (Tony Shalhoub). Jack predicts Kerrigan will not get the promotion she is seeking, the Seattle Seahawks are going to win that night, the city will experience an unseasonable hailstorm the next morning -- and, oh yeah, Kerrigan is going to die in one week. 
When Jack's predictions start to come true, Kerrigan is thrown into a first-class panic attack and re-evaluates her entire existence. 
This is where the very strong first act ends, and the extremely weak second act starts. Kerrigan turns to Pete for guidance, dumps her handsome, but superficial, ballplayer boyfriend (Christian Kane), and begins to get in touch with the important things in life -- including falling in love with Pete. She then shows up live on air while inebriated, takes sides in a story about a transit bus strike, leads the crowd in a drunken rendition of the Rolling Stones song "Satisfaction," and says the f-word on TV. 
In reality, this behavior would get anyone in broadcasting thrown out on their rear. But Kerrigan finds herself promoted to the network and relocated to New York City and the big time. Her previous superficial dreams have now suddenly come true, and since she got the job that Jack said she wouldn't get, Kerrigan figures his prediction about her death is also wrong. 
Now we stumble into the final act, where things start to get a little better and the plot begins to wrap up. The film finally becomes a cautionary tale about the American Dream and being careful about what you wish for -- since, as the old saying goes, you just might get it. 

Good casting 

Jolie is excellent in her role, which would have been played by Jean Arthur or Carole Lombard in another era. Despite some of the ludicrous plot points in the middle of the film, this Academy Award-winning actress is exceedingly believable in her journey towards self-discovery and the true meaning of fulfilling life. Yep, just like Dorothy, happiness is in her own backyard. 

Burns, whose limited cynical persona doesn't always fit his characters, is quite good in the role of Pete. The actor, who began his professional life as a production assistant for "Entertainment Tonight's" New York bureau, knows his way around local news and a TV camera. His trademark scruffy looks and loose style fits the role to a T. 

"Life Or Something Like It" opens nationwide on Friday and is rated PG-13.