Contemplate your existence

Someone once said you should live each day as if it’s your last, because one day, it will be.

In Life or Something Like It, Lanie Carrigan faces living what she thinks are her final days.

Angelina Jolie stars as the Seattle-based broadcast reporter who does mostly fluff pieces on the evening news.

She has a five-year plan for success, and everything seems to be going her way. She has an attractive fiance that plays baseball for the Seattle Mariners, a great apartment, a great job and great friends.

She’s a Marilyn Monroe look-alike with a large blonde shell of hair. She comments that “It’s my trademark.”

Her life begins to change after an encounter with “Jack the Prophet,” a homeless man who makes his living predicting weather and sports scores.

Casually, Jack tells Lanie that she will die the following Thursday. After some of his other predications come true, Lanie starts to panic.

Faced with a week to live, Lanie re-evaluates her life and life in general – what people work so hard for, what makes relationships work and what are the most important things in life.

She comes to the conclusion that she is doing the furthest thing from living life.

A philosophical, grungy camera man, Pete, played by Edward Burns, helps her quest for enlightenment. He makes her define life, love and happiness.

By the end, it’s not that surprising that Lanie is still living, but it could be argued that she wasn’t alive at all until faced with what she thought was certain death.

There’s a love story somewhere beneath the surface of the movie, but that’s not the focus. Life or Something Like It cries out to its audience, “Change your life before it’s too late!”

It offers a perfect combination of comedy and love, and it even has a moral without being preachy.