Life Or Something Like It
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Edward Burns
Extras: Commentary Track
Rating:
How would it change you, your perspective on things and your character if you would learn that you had only a few days left to live? This is the basic premise of ’Life Or Something Like It’ as an aspiring TV anchor Lanie (Angelina Jolie) learns from a homeless ’prophet’ that she will die in a week. Of course she refuses to believe but when all of his other prophecies come true, she is starting to get seriously worried.
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is presenting ’Life Or Something Like It’ in an anamorphic widescreen version in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio on this disc, as well as a cropped fullscreen presentation on the disc’s flip side. The image is meticulously clean without any speckles or defects. The transfer reveals a very high level of definition and very natural color reproduction throughout. Blacks are deep and solid, creating shadows that never break up but always maintain their details. No notable signs of edge-enhancement is evident and the compression is free of compression artifacts.
The film comes with a 5.1 channel Dolby Digital audio track as well as supplemental Dolby Surround tracks in English, French and Spanish, all of which are well produced and feature a natural frequency response with very dominant basses and undistorted high ends. The dynamic range is good, though this is not the film to look for subtle dynamic details.
’Life Or Something Like It’ also contains an interesting commentary track by director Stephen Herek in which he talks about the production itself as well as his cast and the characters in the film. It shows that he was a bit more ambitious as the film itself turned out – the movie is sadly a bit flat and shallow with no real character development and/or character study.
’Life Or Something Like It’ is a romantic tragedy, in a sense, that despite the fact that it deals with death as the main subject, remains high spirited for the most part. It is an entertaining film, as long as you don’t expect any serious dissertation of the subject matter. I personally found the Hollywood ending a turn-off, but I did enjoy the rest of the movie. Jolie’s antics and Edward Burns’ counterplay made for an entertaining movie.
