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Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson (right) in The Bucket List |
Bucket boys are doing it for kicks
THE BUCKET LIST
Directed by ROB REINER
Certificate 12a
SIX months to live. That’s the bleak diagnosis faced by hard-bitten corporate billionaire Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) when he wakes up in hospital after collapsing at a board meeting, to be told he is suffering from terminal cancer.
He can’t believe it. World weary and cynical, with four ex-wives on his CV and every luxury that money can provide, he is suddenly forced to face the Grim Reaper knowing that all the wealth in the world won’t buy him any more time.
In the next bed in the room they share he finds a fellow sufferer. Carter (Morgan Freeman) is a lowly black car mechanic with a totally different outlook – a love of humanity that gives him the strength to come to terms with the inevitable. He also has an encyclopedic fund of useless information, on which he expounds happily at every opportunity.
Cole’s first reflex is to have him thrown out. But he is reminded by his aide (Sean Hayes) that he owns the hospital and made the rules: “Two to a room, and no exceptions!” So they’re stuck with each other.
Slowly the ice melts. Cole finds he can joke about his plight, announcing as he comes out of a brain operation with a massive scar across his shaven head: “I love the smell of chemo in the morning!”
One day Cole spots his companion discreetly making notes – the “bucket list” of all the things he wants to do in life before he kicks the bucket – and decides to fulfil his companion’s dreams.
“One thing I’ve got is money,” he declares. “I can’t stop making it.”
Cole’s own list is all wine, women and song. Carter has more spiritual aspirations: “I want to experience a moment of true majesty.”
“How about sky-diving?” Cole shouts – and there they are, strapped to their instructors, hurtling out of a plane over the desert.
It’s the exhilarating start to a world trip, and a bonus travelogue for the audience: luxury French chateaux, watching the sun set over the pyramids, a stroll through the Taj Mahal and on to the Great Wall of China via a big-game safari in Africa.
Freeman in particular is magnetic, with that voice like gravel being shaken in a sieve as the time draws near: “Your life goes by so fast, like smoke through a keyhole.” Nicholson, yet again, seems to be playing himself – the womanising rascal with a wicked glint in his eye, but it works.
But it’s still great to watch two old pro’s acting their socks off as director Rob Reiner treads that highwire between heartbreak and hilarity, in the sort of odd-couple escapade that reminded me of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in their prime.
If I admit to being misty-eyed more than once, that’s what comes of being an old softie when the violins start playing and the schmaltz is laid on with a trowel.
But what’s wrong with a spot of good old-fashioned sentiment, anyway? |
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