More bad news for women who bought into the feminist myth that careers are important: ambition will not only ruin your life, it might end it. That’s the moral of Life or Something like It, a movie or something like it from fitfully inspired director Stephen Herek that features Angelina Jolie’s most polished and appealing performance to date and then uses it to set the cause of women’s rights back to about 1953.

That’s the date of Gentleman Prefer Blondes and the Marilyn Monroe performance that, glimpsed on TV, shaped young Lanie Kerrigan’s own image of herself. She grows up to become a big-haired reporter for a Seattle television station, and her life couldn’t be more perfect — her fiancé’s a Mariners’ superstar, she has a great body under her pink suit, and the network is interested in her. Who cares what Pete (Edward Burns), the unwashed cameraman, the one-time one-night stand, has to say. Then Lanie interviews Prophet Jack (Tony Shalhoub), the homeless prestidigitator, who tells her she has a week to live, and it all comes crashing down. She smokes! She eats! She doesn’t shower! She drinks on the air and turns into Courtney Love in one of the film’s finest moments! Fortunately, she has Pete to fall back on, and he teaches her that she might be able to save her life if she changes it. When it comes to life or something like it, this film chooses the latter.