Life or Something Like It
Encyclopedia
Life or Something Like It is a 2002
romantic comedy film
directed by Stephen Herek
. The film focuses on television
reporter Lanie Kerrigan (Angelina Jolie
) and her quest to find meaning in her life. The original music score was composed by David Newman
. The film's tagline is: "Destiny is what you make of it."
), a successful reporter for a Seattle television station interviews a self-proclaimed prophet
, Jack (Tony Shalhoub
), to find out if he really can predict football scores. Instead, Prophet Jack not only predicts the football score, and that it would hail
the next day, but also that she would die in seven days, meaning the following Thursday. When his first two prophecies turn out to be correct, Kerrigan panics and again meets with Jack and asks him for another prophecy so that she could prove it wrong; which would imply uncertainty of her death. Jack tells her that there will be a relatively significant earthquake
in San Francisco at 9:06 am, she hopes that it would be wrong but again it also becomes reality. Now Lanie becomes sure for her upcoming death and forced to reevaluate her life.
The remainder of the storyline, which runs for the week of the prophecy, revolves around her attempts at introspection. She seeks consolation in her famous baseball player boyfriend Cal Cooper (Christian Kane
), and in her family, but finds little there. Her lifelong ambition, that 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 (Edward Burns
), with whom she once had casual sex
; he introduces her to a new approach to life. Pete tells her to live every moment of her life and to do whatever she always wanted to do. Lanie implements Pete's advice; she moves in with Pete for a day, he introduces her to his son Tommy (Jesse James Rutherford) who lives with his mother who had separated with Pete, they spends a whole day together with Tommy; that night they 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 and tells her that her appetite for success and fame will never end. Lanie sadly 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. But Jack explains that he was right as Lanie will never be able to get the job as she'll die before it begins; he again gives a prophecy of a death of a famous former baseball player in a plane crash. Pete receives a news for the death of a same person, whose death was foretold by Jack; he tries to call Lanie to warn her. But when he doesn't reach her, he also flies to New York. Lanie, unconcerned with Jack's prophecy, interviews her idol, famous media personality Deborah Connors (Stockard Channing
), which receives huge television ratings
. Lanie is offered a better opportunity but she declines as now she knows what is worthwhile in her life - she goes to Pete in Seattle. Outside in the street a police officer gets into a conflict with a man, who shoots a bullet into the air. Pete tries to warn Lanie across the street, but she is shot in the crossfire. Luckily, Lanie survives, and Pete tells her in the hospital that he has loved her since the first time he saw her; Lanie says she loves him, too. Later, Pete, Lanie and Tommy watch Cal's baseball game, where Lanie (in a voiceover) tells viewers that one part of her has died - the part which didn't know how to live a life.
. The TV station in the movie, KQMO, was actually real-life Seattle TV station KOMO-TV
(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
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
, 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.
. Life or Something Like It was also a flop at the box office, grossing only $17 million worldwide and failed to bring back its $40 million budget. Jolie's performance in the film earned her a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress.
2002 in film
The year 2002 in film involved some significant events. The first significant releases of sequels took place between The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Men in Black II, Analyze That, Spy Kids 2: The Island of...
romantic comedy film
Romantic comedy film
Romantic comedy films are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles. One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily"...
directed by Stephen Herek
Stephen Herek
Stephen Robert Herek is an American film director.Herek was born in San Antonio, Texas. He attended the University of Texas at Austin. His career as film director took off in 1986 with Critters followed by Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure where he worked with Keanu Reeves in 1989...
. The film focuses on television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
reporter Lanie Kerrigan (Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...
) and her quest to find meaning in her life. The original music score was composed by David Newman
David Newman (composer)
David Louis Newman is an American composer and conductor known particularly for his film scores. In a career spanning nearly forty years, he has composed music for nearly 100 feature films.-Life and career:...
. The film's tagline is: "Destiny is what you make of it."
Plot
Lanie Kerrigan (Angelina JolieAngelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...
), a successful reporter for a Seattle television station interviews a self-proclaimed prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
, Jack (Tony Shalhoub
Tony Shalhoub
Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub is an American actor of Lebanese descent. His television work includes the roles of Antonio Scarpacci on Wings and sleuth Adrian Monk on the TV series Monk. He has won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for his work in Monk...
), to find out if he really can predict football scores. Instead, Prophet Jack not only predicts the football score, and that it would hail
Hail
Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is referred to as a hail stone. Hail stones on Earth consist mostly of water ice and measure between and in diameter, with the larger stones coming from severe thunderstorms...
the next day, but also that she would die in seven days, meaning the following Thursday. When his first two prophecies turn out to be correct, Kerrigan panics and again meets with Jack and asks him for another prophecy so that she could prove it wrong; which would imply uncertainty of her death. Jack tells her that there will be a relatively significant earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
in San Francisco at 9:06 am, she hopes that it would be wrong but again it also becomes reality. Now Lanie becomes sure for her upcoming death and forced to reevaluate her life.
The remainder of the storyline, which runs for the week of the prophecy, revolves around her attempts at introspection. She seeks consolation in her famous baseball player boyfriend Cal Cooper (Christian Kane
Christian Kane
Christian Kane is an American actor and singer/songwriter of Native American descent. He currently stars as Eliot Spencer on the TNT series Leverage. He is best known for his roles in the television shows Angel and Into the West, and the movies Just Married and Secondhand Lions.He is the lead...
), and in her family, but finds little there. Her lifelong ambition, that 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 (Edward Burns
Edward Burns
Edward Fitzgerald Burns is an American actor, film producer, writer and director.-Early life:Burns was born in Woodside, Queens, New York, the son of Molly , a federal agency manager, and Edward J. Burns, a public relations spokesman and police officer. He was raised a Roman Catholic...
), with whom she once had casual sex
Casual sex
Casual sex or hooking up refers to certain types of human sexual activity outside the context of a romantic relationship. The term is not always used consistently: some use it to refer to any extramarital sex, some use it to refer to sex in a casual relationship, whereas others reserve its use for...
; he introduces her to a new approach to life. Pete tells her to live every moment of her life and to do whatever she always wanted to do. Lanie implements Pete's advice; she moves in with Pete for a day, he introduces her to his son Tommy (Jesse James Rutherford) who lives with his mother who had separated with Pete, they spends a whole day together with Tommy; that night they sleep together for the second time. The next day Lanie receives an opportunity for a job she always dreamed of in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
; she asks Pete to come with her, but he declines and tells her that her appetite for success and fame will never end. Lanie sadly 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. But Jack explains that he was right as Lanie will never be able to get the job as she'll die before it begins; he again gives a prophecy of a death of a famous former baseball player in a plane crash. Pete receives a news for the death of a same person, whose death was foretold by Jack; he tries to call Lanie to warn her. But when he doesn't reach her, he also flies to New York. Lanie, unconcerned with Jack's prophecy, interviews her idol, famous media personality Deborah Connors (Stockard Channing
Stockard Channing
Stockard Channing is an American stage, film and television actress. She is known for her portrayal of First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing; for playing Betty Rizzo in the film Grease; and for her role as Ouisa Kittredge in the play Six Degrees of Separation and its...
), which receives huge television ratings
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
. Lanie is offered a better opportunity but she declines as now she knows what is worthwhile in her life - she goes to Pete in Seattle. Outside in the street a police officer gets into a conflict with a man, who shoots a bullet into the air. Pete tries to warn Lanie across the street, but she is shot in the crossfire. Luckily, Lanie survives, and Pete tells her in the hospital that he has loved her since the first time he saw her; Lanie says she loves him, too. Later, Pete, Lanie and Tommy watch Cal's baseball game, where Lanie (in a voiceover) tells viewers that one part of her has died - the part which didn't know how to live a life.
KOMO-TV
The majority of the movie was shot on location in Seattle, Washington although portions were filmed in downtown VancouverVancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
. The TV station in the movie, KQMO, was actually real-life Seattle TV station KOMO-TV
KOMO-TV
KOMO-TV, virtual channel 4, is a television station in Seattle, Washington. It is an affiliate of ABC and broadcasts on digital channel 38. KOMO-TV is the flagship station of Fisher Communications, and its studios and offices are co-located with sister radio stations KOMO , KVI , and KPLZ-FM ...
(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
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
s; among them are longtime anchors Dan Lewis
Dan Lewis (newsreader)
Dan Lewis is a long-time news presenter and reporter for KOMO-TV, in Seattle, Washington.He came to KOMO-TV in 1987 after working at television station WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., replacing retiring news anchor Jim Harriott. Before that, he had worked at WISN-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
and Margo Myers (the latter moved to KIRO-TV
KIRO-TV
KIRO-TV, virtual channel 7, is the CBS affiliate television station in Seattle, Washington. It broadcasts on digital channel 39. The station's offices and broadcasting center are located near Seattle Center in Belltown, and its transmitter is located on Queen Anne Hill...
in January 2005), weather anchor and Front Runners
Front Runners (TV show)
Front Runners is a weekly half hour magazine show that originally aired on KOMO-TV in Seattle from 1986 to 1995. Hosted by Steve Pool and produced by Ken Morrison, the show was nationally syndicated from 1991 - 1995 and aired in more than 40 markets including New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago,...
host Steve Pool
Steve Pool
Steve Pool is the principal weather anchor for KOMO-TV in Seattle, having joined the station as an intern while attending the University of Washington...
, 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
Pamela Martin
Pamela Martin is an American-born television reporter on Canadian TV. She formerly co-anchored the weekday 6pm newscasts on CTV British Columbia alongside Bill Good....
and Jill Krop
Jill Krop
Jill Krop is a Canadian television journalist and one of the Global BC anchors, as well as radio personality.She was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1963 and raised in British Columbia where she studied journalism at The British Columbia Institute of Technology and graduated with her BCIT Diploma of...
, at the time both employed with BCTV
CHAN-TV
CHAN-DT is a television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, broadcasting over-the-air on digital channel 22, and available via cable providers in the area on channel 11. Owned by Shaw Communications as a part of its Shaw Media division, it is the West Coast flagship station of the...
, appeared briefly in scenes shot in the BCTV studios.
Main cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Angelina Jolie Angelina Jolie Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the... |
Lanie Kerrigan |
| Edward Burns Edward Burns Edward Fitzgerald Burns is an American actor, film producer, writer and director.-Early life:Burns was born in Woodside, Queens, New York, the son of Molly , a federal agency manager, and Edward J. Burns, a public relations spokesman and police officer. He was raised a Roman Catholic... |
Pete Scanlon |
| Tony Shalhoub Tony Shalhoub Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub is an American actor of Lebanese descent. His television work includes the roles of Antonio Scarpacci on Wings and sleuth Adrian Monk on the TV series Monk. He has won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for his work in Monk... |
Prophet Jack |
| Christian Kane Christian Kane Christian Kane is an American actor and singer/songwriter of Native American descent. He currently stars as Eliot Spencer on the TNT series Leverage. He is best known for his roles in the television shows Angel and Into the West, and the movies Just Married and Secondhand Lions.He is the lead... |
Cal Cooper |
| James Gammon James Gammon James Richard Gammon was an American actor, known for playing grizzled "good ol' boy" types in numerous films and television series.-Early life:... |
Pat Kerrigan |
| Melissa Errico Melissa Errico -Biography:Born in Manhattan, Errico moved to Manhasset on Long Island at an early age. Her parents, a sculptor and a physician/concert pianist, supported her early interest in ballet, and gymnastics, and Melissa competed nationally as a gymnast... |
Andrea |
| Stockard Channing Stockard Channing Stockard Channing is an American stage, film and television actress. She is known for her portrayal of First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing; for playing Betty Rizzo in the film Grease; and for her role as Ouisa Kittredge in the play Six Degrees of Separation and its... |
Deborah Connors |
| Gregory Itzin Gregory Itzin Gregory Martin Itzin is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his role as disgraced U.S. President Charles Logan in the television series 24.-Early life:... |
Dennis |
| Veena Sood Veena Sood Veena Sood is a Canadian-based film and television actress of Punjabi descent.She works in both the UK and Canada. She starred in ITV's Compulsion featuring Ray Winstone and Parminder Nagra. She has also starred in the UK film Nina's Heavenly Delights,as well as the Canada/UK film Touch of Pink,... |
Doctor |
Reception
The movie received negative reviews from critics, maintaining only a 27% rating from Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
. Life or Something Like It was also a flop at the box office, grossing only $17 million worldwide and failed to bring back its $40 million budget. Jolie's performance in the film earned her a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress.