Yeuch. The only decent things were the two scenes with prophet Jack. The rest was absolutely terrible.
First the plot and then the acting.
Let’s see the plot.
A woman is selfish and cold and without feelings because she wants a career and when she’s offered the chance of her life, the job of her dreams, she wants it… and yet for decades we’ve seen movies with families forced to move because the husband/father got a better job somewhere else, and there was nothing wrong with that, with the children having to leave friends and change school, with the wife having to leave her job and her old life to follow him, that was ok, but since this character here is a woman, how dare she think of a job elsewhere when her man is here! How very dare she!
Then there’s the acting.
Jolie gave the worst performance of her life, probably, it was almost unbearable to watch, she spent the whole time making pouty lips or batting her eyelashes never even trying to give this character a soul. Not like she had a lot to go on with, to be honest, everything was terrible.
She had blonde hair that did not suit her at all in order to give her a bimbo look, because this Lanie only thinks of her career and when she thinks she’s going to die she calls her boyfriend Cal in the middle of the night and complains he doesn’t support her because he wants to sleep and not chat.
Her love/hate relataionship with cameraman Pete is boring and doesn’t really communicate any feelings. The scene where she gets drunk and goes live wearing a hoodie and singing Satisfaction with the workers on strike felt pathetic to me.
Prophet Jack is a homeless man who sees things, and everything he says becomes true. He told Lanie, who was interviewing him for the news, that sh’d die on Thursday. It was rather annoying that they never told us what day it was - or at least I didn’t hear it - but anyway it was a week’s time at the most. She becomes more and more agitated as his other predictions come true; this is what causes her to get drunk and appear on tv dressed far from her usual perfect self and singing out loud.
Bad scenes, really bad.
She had been bickering a lot with cameraman Pete, since they had a one night stand they’ve been provoking and antagonising each other. Now he tries to help her, to show her how to enjoy life. She meets his son, who is the reason why he’ll never change city for work, to stay near him. So when Lanie gets a job in New York he doesn’t go with her and accuses her of always putting her career first.
Lanie does one interview, which I suppose should be heartfelt and fenomenal but is not, and that’s it, she wants to go home.
New York’s life is dangerous, though, and she gets in the middle of a police operation or something, she’s hit by accident and sort of dies for a moment, before the doctors revive her. There’s the obvious confession between Lanie and Pete loving each other, and they’ll stay together happily ever after.
The idea wouldn’t be bad if done correctly though.
Lanie is Angelina Jolie
Pete is Edward Burns
Prophet Jack is Tony Shalhoub (yeah, Monk)
Cal is Christian Kane
ITA Una vita quasi perfetta
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