The Bucket List

Despite the pairing of two great actors and a grand theme (nothing less than the Meaning of Life), The Bucket List falls considerably short of being profound, despite director Rob Reiner's obvious efforts to achieve same. Corporate billionaire Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) and working class mechanic Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) have nothing in common—except for their terminal illnesses. While sharing a hospital room, the pair come up with a list of things to do before “kicking the bucket” and then set off on a last great journey together, becoming unlikely friends while finding their true joys in life. The Bucket List is ultimately a self-congratulatory, hackneyed exercise, with Cole and Chambers seeming altogether too gleeful about their Excellent Adventure, while eschewing any serious contemplation about what lies beyond the final curtain. Presumably, Nicholson and Freeman found this project appealing because their advancing age makes them more cognizant of their own mortality. But the little nuggets of wisdom they swap (such as “You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you”) seem better suited to fortune-cookie messages or Hallmark cards than to mainstream motion pictures with this much wasted talent. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: DVD extras include both widescreen and full screen versions of the film, a five-minute “Writing a Bucket List” featurette with screenwriter Justin Zackham, the music video “Say” performed by John Mayer, DVD-ROM features, and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray version is a trivia track with pop-up graphics, 39-minutes of interviews by director-producer Rob Reiner (one with costar Jack Nicholson; the other with costar Morgan Freeman), and a five-minute “making-of” the “Say” music video by John Mayer. Bottom line: great to have both full screen and widescreen versions on the same disc, but the film itself is no great shakes.] (E. Hulse)