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If you want to see an example of a movie that's been focus-grouped to death,  go check out Life, or Something Like It. It's not an experience I recommend, but it certainly is one of the clearest examples you'll find of a film that has no idea of what it's doing.

The movie opens with Lanie Kerrigan (played by Angelina Jolie) lying on an operating table while offering the following voice-over: "Things happen . . . if certain things happened, would I be thinking I needed more time?" After which, her life, full of pain and heartache, flashes before her eyes. Ahh, the audience whispers, it's a film about a woman coming to grips with her own mortality and understanding what's important in life. 

But then the movie introduces Pete (played by Edward Burns), a sarcastic co-worker, and soon the sparks are flying between the two. Ohh, the audience coos in recognition, it's a workplace romance where the two leads hate each other at first and end up in bed by the beginning of the third act. But then we meet Prophet Jack (played by Tony Shaloub), a homeless man who predicts the future. Kerrigan, who's a tv "lifestyle journalist," interviews him, and he boldly predicts that she'll die in a week. Which would make us believe we're back to the mortality angle, except the movie doesn't go that route but instead angles for a suspenseful "will she die or not" approach. Along the way, we also witness family fights and reconciliation, an embarrassingly sappy scene between Pete and his son, and a bizarre and pointless sequence where Kerrigan leads a group of strikers in a ROUSING rendition of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction."

Holding all of this together is nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. Unless you count the seven producers (yes, seven!) who clearly couldn't agree on the movie's theme and so decided to be all things to all people. The result, of course, is a not-so-glorious mess which features not one, not two, but three song montages in the span of thirty minutes. It's like watching a particularly boring half-hour of the VH-1 channel.

If things couldn't get any worse, we're also treated to an egregious example of product placement, when Pete constructs an entire metaphor for life around Altoids mints. To drive the point home, the Altoids (played by themselves) dominate the next scene as well. 

Trying to stay above water in all this, and doing a surprisingly good job, is Angelina Jolie. I had expected that her outsized persona (on full display in films like Tomb Raider and The Bone Collector) would be completely out of place in a romantic drama, but she does an admirable job of toning down her intensity. In a couple scenes, she appears genuinely vulnerable, and her natural charisma and Hollywood smile light up the screen in others. Yes, she strides through some scenes like Sherman marching through Atlanta, but those are the exceptions, not the norm. In fact, if the script wasn't so terrible, I'd say the movie was worth seeing just for Jolie alone. We can only hope that she decides to abandon the Tomb Raider project for more romantic comedies.

The same cannot be said of her co-star. Someone will have to explain to me how Ed Burns continues to work in movies. He "burst" onto the scene with his independent film The Brothers McMullen, and has continued to star/direct in flicks where he's the sensitive but hunky romantic lead while his current girlfriend plays his adoring sidekick. His talent as an actor or director has never been proven, and yet he appears in a couple movies a year. With Life, he reminds us again of what a space-waster he is. And even outstanding actors like Tony Shaloub (The Man Who Wasn't There) and Stockard Channing (The Business of Strangers) can't overcome the horrific dialogue they're asked to spout. Channing has the especially unfortunate task of playing a Barbara Walters-type who ends up crying on camera. The effect is supposed to be touching (and life changing for Lanie), but it only puts the stamp of shame on this ignoble project.

In most cases, I would blame the director for all of this, and Stephen Herek (Mr. Holland's Opus) is certainly worthy of some. But the movie's transgressions feel like the work of a committee that couldn't agree. Is it a romance? Is it a drama? Is it a comedy? Is it full of suspense? Is it quirky? Is it a slice of life? The movie tried to satisfy everyone in the focus group and ends up satisfying no one in the audience.  

J. Robert Parks 4/30/2002