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Count me out

Deborah Ross

Wednesday, 13th February 2008

The Bucket List
12A, Nationwide

As Rob Reiner should know better and Jack Nicholson should know better and Morgan Freeman should know better, what you have here is a film which has to make you ask: how come they didn’t? You’d think one, at least, would say somewhere along the line: ‘Thanks, but if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll count myself out of this lazy and condescending package.’ I don’t get it, but at least I napped though a sizeable chunk in the middle. Yes, I did feel cross at myself when I woke up, although only when I realised there was still some way to go.

The Bucket List, with its themes of opposites bonding as buddies, learning there is more to life than money, and laughing in the face of death (ha, ha), may not strike you as especially original, possibly because they are not. Still, don’t let that alone stop you, as there is much, much more. There is a feast of things to stop you here. A banquet, in fact!

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Painting Family: The De Brays, Master Painters of 17th Century Holland
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Allan Massie reflects on Malcolm Lowry

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Margaret Mellis: A Life in Colour
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Gore Vidal tells Mary Wakefield that America has forgotten its constitutional roots, and explains why Bobby Kennedy was ‘the biggest son of a bitch in politics’