Kick this 'Bucket'
"The Bucket List" might as well be a McDonald's Happy Meal. We already know the contents before we buy it. We already know what it's going to taste like. The familiarity guarantees we won't be disappointed by the product.
We've seen the main characters in this movie countless times before. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman have played subtle variations on them during their careers.
In this overwritten screenplay (reportedly finished in a quick two weeks), each character gets one personal problem that we expect will be resolved by the end credits. No surprise. It is.
For most of the first 39 minutes, "Bucket List" is little more than a one-set, two-character stage play about a couple of aging cancer patients in a hospital room.
Edward Cole (Nicholson) is a brash, unmarried, hedonistic hospital tycoon who likes to throw his weight around and do whatever he pleases. Carter Chambers (Freeman) is a stoic philosopher, garage mechanic, a walking Wikipedia and a responsible family man with dreams of being a history teacher.
"I've taken baths deeper than you!" Carter says to Edward. He could say the same about Justin Zackham's script. Take the scene where Edward starts talking, then sees Carter wearing earphones and realizes he's talking to himself. What does Edward say? "Earphones! I'm talking to myself, again!"
Duhhhh.
One can only imagine how much more challenging this movie could have been had director Rob Reiner suggested his two stars step outside of the box office and play against type. But no. The two actors remain firmly in their pigeon holes as an odd couple of patients in a cancer ward, each given a few months to live.
At first, the two bruise each other with their 10-foot poles. They develop a begrudging friendship. One day Edward picks up a paper discarded by Carter. It's a list of things he wants to do before he dies, or kicks the bucket.
Edward contributes a few ideas to the list and convinces Carter to live them out -- all financed by Edward's fortune.
Suddenly, "The Bucket List" turns into an episodic tale of two arrested adolescents who run around the world indulging in narcissistic, sensationalist experiences such as skydiving, driving (and wrecking) race cars, motorcycling on the Great Wall of China and hunting the big cats in Africa.
Only one item on the list -- doing something for a stranger -- offers a selfless gesture. As for the big-cat hunt, the movie dismisses it with a voice-over explaining Edward decided not to kill any animals on his jungle safari. So why bother including it in the movie?
Former "Will and Grace" star Sean Hayes plays Thomas, Edward's loyal assistant and frequent abuse sponge. In Hong Kong, Edward secretly hires a prostitute to pretend to be a tourist and seduce Carter, but he rejects her overtures. Thomas says, "I'm proud of you!" But not to Carter. To Edward.
Did Reiner or anyone else actually listen to this movie?
"The Bucket List" manages only one big surprise at the end, and that one is falsely earned since the voice-over narration at the beginning deliberately misleads us to expect something that doesn't happen.
Reiner, who used to be a good director ("The Princess Bride," "The Sure Thing"), allows Freeman to fall back too many times on his manufactured, responsive laugh and seldom pulls Nicholson back from the brink of overacting.
Only Marc Shaiman's score -- a wonderfully wrought work of piano-dominant music -- saves this movie from its own obviousness and engages our emotions in ways the script and actors do not.
"The Bucket List"
1½ stars out of four
Opens today
Morgan Freeman as Carter Chambers
Jack Nicholson as Edward Cole
Sean Hayes as Thomas
Written by Justin Zackham. Produced by Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, Alan Griesman and Rob Reiner. Directed by Rob Reiner. A Warner Bros. release. Rated (PG-13) language. Running time: 97 minutes.