The PopcornReel.com Film Review: "The Bucket List" (Warner Brothers)

"Find the joy in your life," says Carter Chambers to Edward Cole during Rob Reiner's "The Bucket List", which expanded its release beyond New York and Los Angeles's Christmas bows to cities across North America today. The quoted line above is wise advice to which the director adheres in his film, finding joy for the most part as he gets a pair of Oscar winners in Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson to pal around, bicker and have the kinds of meaning-of-life conversations that define serious, humorous and fulfilling interactions between those of us who are far closer to the end of our lives than the beginning. The two veteran actors, on paper an intriguing and interesting combination, have moderately good rapport here, and the cantankerous Cole (Nicholson) is a billionaire head of a consortium of hospitals he runs, and he is fighting a court order against his preserving ownership of them. Chambers (Freeman), a mechanic proud of his working-class life, "has 45 years greased up under the hood of a car," he says to his long-standing wife, and is looking for some new-found freedom. On a whim Chambers devises a list of things to do before kicking the proverbial bucket. He reluctantly goes along at Cole's urging to fulfill the things on his own fantasy wish list.

Both Cole and Chambers are facing terminal illness, and Mr. Reiner addresses these moments sincerely, in sometimes jarring ways. The film -- narrated by Mr. Freeman's character in the same soothing way that "Shawshank" was -- is at times a pedestrian affair, broken up (or further accentuated) by what can most kindly be described as a worn-out, if not exhausted performance by Mr. Nicholson, who has parodied himself for more than a decade now, beginning with "As Good As It Gets" (with the exception of the 2002 film "About Schmidt".) But even a worn-down, stale Mr. Nicholson is better on most days than other actors who mail in lazy performances, and here as Edward Cole he supplies bursts of levity before the melodrama -- which one can see coming from a mile away -- arrives. "This is living!", Cole shouts while thousands of feet high in the air, in what was either seamless digital effects or an actual skydive (if real, how many times did they do that scene?) "I hate your rotten guts!", screams Carter in mid-air flight. Carter's screams of "hate" however -- and even in a PG-13-rated film he has the right to be far more demonstrative in his words than he is -- come far too late.

"The Bucket List" is not the best film, yet it is far from the worst. Mr. Reiner has done better work for sure, but at least half of his latest effort is decent, with laugh lines scattered amidst the sensitive terrain of inevitable death. The film lacks the freshness of "The Savages", which dealt with similar subject matter last month, though "Bucket" still has its moments and stands alone as warm, enjoyable yet uneven entertainment. Justin Zackham's third feature film script could be far stronger though, as it fails to elucidate a meaty enough back story for some of the characters who emerge during the course of the film. The sublime Beverly Todd, who plays Virginia, Carter's wife, is introduced as a nagging, somewhat bitter woman. (What else is new -- when will male writers stop introducing women in their screenplays as either seductresses, sniping spouses or out-and-out sex-ornaments? Aren't there any other intangibles or qualities in a woman either on screen or off that us men can admire? Are women that one-dimensional in the eyes of the men who write these screenplays? And the answer is ...)

Sean Hayes of the now-defunct television sitcom "Will & Grace" plays Cole's unctuous hospital managing assistant and doesn't do badly as Thomas, whose patronizing ways grate his boss. Rob Morrow, from another defunct television sitcom "Northern Exposure", shows up in a curious turn as a doctor who attends to Cole but is oblivious to the doctor-less Chambers, even as Carter lies just footsteps away from Edward in the same hospital room. In such moments there are mild suggestions of racial disparity and unequal treatment, accurately depicting the dual issues for Carter of abandonment in old age and invisibility as a black man in the eyes of a white doctor in America. Some of the film's well-meaning segments and locales seem hokey and overly-manufactured, but Cole and Chambers' adventures are always genuine, and with the zeal of life firmly in mind.

"The Bucket List" sometimes comes close to overstaying its welcome, but in general it's a film that despite its melancholic moments manages to enable audiences to find the joy in it, even if the results of its journey down life's path are inevitable.