When
an ordinary man loves an extraordinary woman who puts her
career above all else in her life, we have the ingredients
for a romantic story. In Life or Something Like It,
director Stephen Herek takes a feminist approach toward that
romantic plot. The woman is Lanie Kerrigan (played by Angelina
Jolie), who is a television feature reporter; with her blonde
wig, she is a double for Marilyn Monroe, yet what comes out
of her mouth is prose that represents an eloquence that is
indisputably genius. The man is Pete (played by Edward Burns),
who is a cameraman for the same television station. Pete is
a New York City Catholic who made a high school girl pregnant,
married her, but later had to agree to a divorce. When his
former wife moved to Seattle, he relocated to be near his
son, the only real love in his life until he experienced love
at first sight with Lanie. However, after have sex with her,
she continued to pursue her career to the point where she
is informed at the beginning of the film by her Seattle boss
that she has a chance to be picked up by the network in New
York and become a national personality. As the story develops,
we see Pete complaining that Lanie is too self-centered, so
we know that he is in love with her, but she believes herself
to be occupationally superior to him. Her boyfriend is Cad
(played by Christian Kane), a star baseball player for the
Seattle Mariners. One day she is interviewing Prophet Jack
(played by Tony Shaloub), a homeless street soothsayer, who
predicts the winning team in a football game, a hailstorm,
and her death within a week. When the first two predictions
come true, Lanie begins to take seriously her mortality. Pete
urges her to evaluate what is really important in her life,
possibly changing herself to avoid her death, but in any case
to do what she must if she really believes that she will die.
As a result, Lanie stops taking showers, looks at old photo
albums, listens to pop hits from yesteryear, breaks up with
Cad, spends time with Peter and his son, and then arrives
drunk for an interview with striking transit workers. Instead
of neutral coverage, she supports the strikers on camera and
starts them singing "I Get No Satisfaction," a story
that presumably will get her fired. Nevertheless, her interview
is broadcast nationwide, incredibly landing her the network
job that she has been seeking all along. Pete then resigns
himself to the prospect that the love of his life will be
in New York while he will remain in Seattle, though he pretends
that he is happy in Seattle and wishes her well. When Lanie
arrives in New York for an interview on AM USA, she stammers
before asking the first question of Deborah Connors (played
by Stockard Channing), who gave up a love affair at age twenty-five
for a distinguished twenty-five career in broadcast journalism
that is to be recognized with a coveted award. Then Lanie,
instead of following the preselected questions, asks her whether
giving up her happiness was really worth the fame and notoriety,
and tears flow from both interviewer and interviewee. As Connors
walks off the set demanding another interviewer, Lanie believes
that she cannot go on the same path to become famous but embittered.
When the head of the network is amazed at the intensity of
the interview and presumably wants to offer her a much bigger
salary and role in the network, she instead walks out into
the street with the intention of resigning and returning to
Seattle. However, some sort of gangland shootout is in progress,
she is shot, and taken to the hospital in critical condition.
While unconscious, Lanie surely must have believed that the
prophecy of her death was correct. Meanwhile, Pete has taken
a plane to join her in New York. When he arrives, he sees
her shot, goes to her bedside in the hospital, and professes
for the first time that he has always loved her. His words
awaken her, she replies in kind, and her condition improves,
though that is not the end of the predictable story. In the
end, we are left with the feminist thesis that men should
not demand that their girlfriends give up careers to subordinate
themselves and should instead love women for their talents
as well as their looks. MH
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