The Bucket List

The Bucket List

Directed by Rob Reiner (PG-13)

Two strangers diagnosed with terminal cancer satisfy lifelong desires.

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Heavy on life lessons, The Bucket List doesn’t have an “ounce of reality about it,” said Todd McCarthy in Variety. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play a billionaire and an auto mechanic who share a hospital room after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Given less than a year to live, the two compose a list of their lifelong desires and flee the hospital to accomplish them before they “kick the bucket.” The list takes them on a “scenic sojourn” to the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and the Great Wall of China—while “any traces of illness are magically banished.” This feel-good film “strenuously denies” medical facts, said Stephen Holden in The New York Times. The men are supposedly in remission yet are as “robust as the rejuvenated seniors in Cocoon.” The Bucket List is really an attempt by director Rob Reiner to revive his own career, said Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com. With two of Hollywood’s most beloved leading men on his side, it might have worked. But we’ve seen Nicholson and Freeman in these roles countless times before: Nicholson as the “cantankerous, witty crustacean,” Freeman as the “winking, twinkling teller of truths.” And those truths—“stop and smell the roses, count our blessings, hug someone we love”—are so trite we’re merely left wishing for a quick end to the pain.