The Bucket List

A little cliched

Brad Kreft Nobody (?)

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An all-too-familiar Morgan Freeman narration guides us into this rather soft attempt at an emotionally dense film about a pair of terminally ill oldies who try to have a last hurrah before they expire. For a film that relies so heavily on an emotional reaction The Bucket List delivers a disappointingly small amount of poignant feeling up until the final few scenes, by which time it is too late to save this weakly-written death comedy/drama.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Nicholson and Freeman as much as the next guy but these two screen titans had little to work with in terms of script. The beginning and middle stages of the film just didn’t seem to hit me with any real emotional weight. Laughter was MIA and the lump that I had expected to appear in my throat during this film never really materialised. The actors are not to blame though. Without Freeman’s smooth, intelligent style and the beautifully eccentric over-acting of Nicholson, The Bucket List would surely go down as one of the year’s biggest wastes of Hollywood funds. It’s just a shame they didn’t have a more powerful script at their disposal, as the idea is a solid one.

So if you enjoy watching these two acting legends kicking around in their familiar styles then you may be into this film. Otherwise I think it should be best left to the oldies.