The Bucket List: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by Rob Reiner, written by Justin Zackham, 97 minutes, rated PG-13.

Rob Reiner's new fairy tale about living and dying with terminal cancer is called "The Bucket List," in which two of our finest living actors--Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson--improve upon the manufactured material by the sheer strength of their talent and chemistry.

From Justin Zackham's script, this unlikely, mostly feel-good movie allows its two main characters to live out their life's fantasies by compiling a bucket list of all the things they want to do before they officially kick the bucket. Since their wishes are steeped in financial extremes--no average person struggling with, say, the cost of health care could afford such extravagances--the movie eschews reality for the balm of going out with a bang.

In the film, Freeman is Carter Chambers, a genius mechanic and "Jeopardy!" wiz who is no stranger to cancer. He's been down this road before, and when the bad news strikes that his cancer has returned, he finds himself back in the hospital, where he undergoes his last possible hope for a full recovery with the help of an experimental drug. His worried wife Virginia (Beverly Todd) is at his side, but as Carter notes in one telling scene about their relationship, he has forgotten when walking down the street without holding her hand wasn't unthinkable.

Nicholson is Edward Cole, the difficult, super-wealthy owner of the hospital in which Carter is convalescing. When Edward coughs up gobs of blood into a handkerchief one afternoon, it's off to his own hospital for him. There, after brain surgery, he himself learns that his own time on Earth is limited to six months, maybe a year. Same as Carter.

Though Cole is a cruel, egomaniacal billionaire, he nevertheless agrees to share a room with Carter because his snappy assistant, Thomas (Sean Hayes), has a mind for PR and doesn't believe that Edward should face the media ramifications of breaking his golden rule--two beds to one room, always.

Whether you buy into that or not, this contrivance nevertheless allows the two men to grow close and become friends. In the film's early scenes, it also allows for some genuine moments of kindness, reflection and manly bonding before--shazam!--the men are heroically well enough to jump out of airplanes, journey to the south of France for dinner, visit the Taj Majal, the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids, and even climb the Himalayas, among other things, in spite of still sporting catheters.

While there is a kind of fizzy, dreamlike joy to be had in watching these men live out their final days in spite of the unlikely energy they have found to do so, anyone on intimate terms with cancer might be left lifting an eyebrow or two at the ease with which the director and writer overlook the realities of the disease. Also, given the strength of the actors, some might come to this movie with their own bucket list--perhaps they'll find a great script that isn't canned or, barring that, performances from Freeman and Nicholson that are reasonably diverting.

They get the latter.

Grade: C+



MA cBO OKA I R!!!