Count me out

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!

Nicholson plays Cole, a greedy corporate billionaire who has put wealth before everything, while Freeman is Carter, a lowly car mechanic who has a loving family and knows what it is to bring joy to others blah-de-blah. Both men are dying and meet when forced to share a hospital room. We aren’t told what they are dying of, but can assume it’s lung cancer as we’ve seen Cole cough blood and Carter drop his cigarette when he takes the call from his doctor. These have to be clues.

They both have just months to live and decide to compile a list of things they’d like to do before they kick the bucket.