The Bucket List
Nicholson and Freeman are dying pals at play in 'The Bucket List'
"The Bucket List" is life-affirming insofar as I can affirm that its makers are still alive. The movie itself is Hollywood deathsploitation. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman come down with cancer. They're put in the same room (Freeman's a mechanic; Nicholson owns the hospital). They talk about suicide. They take their IVs for a walk. They bitch and rant and vomit - actually, you know who wears the rants in this relationship. Freeman just reads his book about Winston Churchill and says the right questions to the answers on "Jeopardy!" before the contestants can. So they're both kind of obnoxious. These grumpy old men hate each other, too. Until, obviously, they don't.
The occasion for this (sigh) unlikely friendship is the list Freeman makes of the things he'd like to do before he - say it with me - kicks the bucket. Nicholson tags along and finances the adventures. If death can't take a holiday, these two will. They skydive and race stock cars. Freeman crashes his. Nicholson trysts with the flight attendant on his private jet. They travel the world, eating dinner in France, going on safari in Africa, talking some more about the big issues along the way. Nicholson and Freeman seem perfectly healthy. It's the special effects that need a walker. One shot of them watching the pyramids looks like wallpaper from somebody's computer.
Rob Reiner directed this movie from Justin Zackham's script, and he's just calling to say "I love you" with this one. What he's done is not lazy exactly (there's one nicely done montage in the hospital), but it's impossible to mistake the movie for inspired. For one thing, any film that starts with Morgan Freeman saying a line like, "I believe you measure yourself by those who measure themselves by you" needs to have its production license revoked. Freeman narrates again? Shawshank me with a spoon. Wouldn't it have been neater for Nicholson to be the at-peace know-it-all narrator and Freeman to be the grouch?
Incidentally, don't be fooled by the appearance of Sean Hayes, from "Will & Grace," as Nicholson's assistant, the "Just Jack!" here is all Nicholson's, and he looks appropriately terrible. But he's looked worse at the Golden Globes - where he's usually more fun. For Nicholson, looking like hell has always been a form of vanity: Hey, I'm letting it all hang out. Aren't I something? Of course, that's where the sex came from in his acting. He was acting like he didn't care. Reiner, who got a robustly ridiculous performance out of him for "A Few Good Men," has never been one for emotional discretion. It's as though he saw Nicholson as vulnerably human as ever in "About Schmidt" and thought, Meh. I want me some Jack. In "The Bucket List," Nicholson is human-ish. And Freeman is so human.
Eventually the buddy comedy stuff falls away, and the movie puts these two through their emotional paces. Freeman needs a break from his long marriage. Nicholson needs to get in touch with his softer side - and, uh oh, his estranged daughter. Freeman's wife (the sympathetic Beverly Todd) is understandably miffed that he'd just up and run off with a stranger when he's got who knows how long to live. Clearly, the idea that
Nicholson and Freeman have fallen in love with each other occurs to no one. (Hayes is, what else, but a glorified houseboy.) But all that would be too "La Cage aux Folles" for these purposes. This is Mitch Albom stuff: high-fiber pablum.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.
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