Angelina Jolie and Edward Burns star in this touching and heartfelt film that I believe is being advertised to the public as a completely different movie.

In the trailers and television spots for "Life or Something Like It" they are trying to sell a funny, quirky romantic comedy, but the film is more of a drama with some funny scenes thrown in to let up on the emotion of it.

Stephen Herek directed this movie and like "Mr. Holland's Opus" the movie centers on what our priorities in life should be. He gives it a heart at its core and that is what separates it from many of today's cliché ridden films that try to make you think and shed a tear.

Angelina Jolie plays a Seattle based local television personality trying to make her way to the top at her station. Just so happens that because of her age and good looks she is going to get a shot at a national job. Her boss decides to help her by putting her out on some assignments with the areas top camera man, who is played by Edward Burns and who so happens to be a guy she slept with during a drunken evening and morning after.

As they play off each other with her go getter, become a star attitude and his laid back, let life happen disposition, we see that opposites can attract. They are then sent to the street to do a story on a homeless prognosticator played brilliantly by the way underrated Tony Shaloub, who should have received an Oscar nomination for last year's "The Man Who Wasn't There". So Jolie decides to ask him if she will get the national job. He says yes, but follows it up with the fact that he sees that she will die in a week.

That is the set up and it goes from there to become a story of what is important in life. Is your job, your money, what other people think of you? Or is it whatever makes you happy? Is it just being a good person and loving the ones who love you?

The film takes on a heavy concept about having only a week to live and spices it up with humor but never losing sight of the fact that when you know the end is near, you seem to say things to people that you would never say before. Now that has been done in films before but not quite as delicately as in this movie.

I found "Life or Something Like It" to be a surprise and give me something that I wasn't expecting, and made me happy to have seen this film.

Now with all of that being said, it is not a perfect film and some of the subplots are a little forced but the message didn't get lost. Jolie, Burns and Shloub deliver strong performances and Director Herek gives us a nice to at the theater.