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January 18, 2008 > Arts & Entertainment > Sappy script leaves Bucket feeling very empty

Sappy script leaves Bucket feeling very empty

By Brian Reinhart | Thresher Editorial Staff

The Bucket List is one of those feel-good movies viewers want to love. They will walk in prepared to love it, try their hardest to love it and still end up disappointed. This movie is a contrived collection of cliches and a frustrating failure.

The stereotypes begin right with the actors: Jack Nicholson (The Departed) and Morgan Freeman (Bruce Almighty). They essentially play a combination of all their characters from past movies — Nicholson is an overbearing, irritable jerk with a heart of gold, and Freeman is a wise man with no flaws. Because the story’s characters are essentially stereotypes of the actors who portray them, it is actually quite difficult to remember their names.

But the movie’s troubles just begin there. Its plot is essentially one massive contrivance, with filthy rich hospital owner Edward Cole (Nicholson) sharing a room in his own hospital due to a cost-cutting measure. His roommate, Carter Chambers (Freeman), is a mere auto mechanic who is also a genius and knows the answer to literally every Jeopardy! question. Though polar opposites, the two men gradually begin to get along when both are told they have six months to live before cancer kills them.

At this point they hit upon the idea of a “bucket list,” a list of things that the author wants to do before he “kicks the bucket.” Here the plot becomes yet harder to believe, as Cole decides to cross off the items on his own list and, even stranger, Chambers agrees to tag along.

What initially had been a promising film about the arrival of death now dissolves into pure, unashamed cheese. The two old men do not act old, and certainly do not act as if they are recovering from chemotherapy. Skydiving, getting tattoos and drag-racing in hot rods are not typical activities for terminal cancer patients, but then realism is not the strong suit of screenwriter Justin Zackham, who should be banned from all films after such “gems” as Going Greek and The Fastest Man in the World.

Inexplicable inaccuracies abound on this predictable path to redemption. For example, Chambers is described as a poor mechanic who is still working to support the family at age eighty, but he still has enough income to live in a large home and wear some slick suits. Odder still, when the characters motorcycle along the Great Wall of China, there is not a single tourist in sight.

Eventually, as the two characters travel the world, they begin to realize that they are unhappy with their lives. The story then moves toward the necessary hokey conclusion, in which both finally find fulfillment and purpose. Along the way are boring arguments, fake epiphanies and a painfully corny sermon on the value of religious faith.

Somehow, thankfully, in the midst of this wasteland of hokey writing, bad directing and zero plausibility, Nicholson and Freeman are able to deliver performances that are up to their usual high standards. Freeman in particular seems incapable of bad acting, and he saves the movie from being a total disaster. Why he chose to act in this film, though, is a mystery as eternal as the question of how Zackham thought this syrupy screenplay was going to keep anybody’s interest.

The script of The Bucket List expects the audience to be moved and overpowered, because it pushes all the necessary emotional buttons. The problem is that its cynical manipulation of viewers’ feelings is all too obvious and could be considered exploitation. This bucket ought to be kicked as far away as possible.

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