Cartoon image not for Angelina

NEW YORK — Angelina Jolie sounds like a majority of critics as she pounds away at 2001’s “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” the film adaptation of the video-game sensation of the same name.

The actress, whose quirky personal life has drawn as much attention as her Oscar-caliber chops, critiques her own one-dimensional lead.

She’s just getting warmed up.

“I was definitely not doing another one,” Miss Jolie says during publicity interviews for the 2003 sequel, “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life,” at New York City’s Essex House earlier this month.

“But we had a chance of doing it right, and I don’t like to leave something unfinished,” she says, a serpentine tattoo peeking out from under her short-sleeve top.

Besides, the 28-year-old actress can use a successful franchise like “Tomb Raider” to secure her pick of other projects.

She already has nabbed a key role in Oliver Stone’s “Alexander the Great,” playing leading man Colin Farrell’s mother during his childhood years.

The brunette actress appears to have had plenty of say in the creation of “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.”

The film features a more complex portrait of the hard-driving explorer’s character, as well as a genuine romance with an old flame (Gerard Butler). That, combined with plenty of exotic locales, gives it a hardier pulse than the original.

Lara Croft is “a little less video vixen and a little more lady” this time around, she says.

Miss Jolie endured an enhanced bustline in the first film to appear more like the video character. She’s happier without the accouterments this time around and scrunches her nose at the thought of plastic surgery.

“I love flaws, scars and wrinkles. … When you see life in a body or a face, it’s beautiful,” she explains.

That may help explain her attraction to her second husband, grizzled actor-director Billy Bob Thornton.

Anyone who read their dual interview in US Weekly magazine won’t soon forget how equally icky and disturbing their maniacal professions of love seemed.

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