Review

January 31st, 2008

The Bucket List
A Review
by lyle e davis

Pssssst! They're still making great movies! Keep it to yourself. Don't let the word get out.

We went to see 'The Bucket List' Sunday afternoon. One of the best movies I've seen in ages. The writing, the dialogue, the acting, the plotline . . . it's all there. Add two great actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, and if this movie doesn't win a slew of Oscars there ain't no justice! (And there may not be . . . see below).

Nicholson and Freeman play two older men, both of whom have come down with cancer, and both of whom wind up in the same hospital room. Freeman plays Carter Chambers, an auto mechanic and Jeopardy buff . . Nicholson is Edward Cole, a multi-billionaire in the healthcare field. Both learn they have six months, perhaps a year to live.

Cole persuades a reluctant Carter Chambers to join him on a worldwide adventure . . . while the two check off a "Bucket List" of dreamed of passions, fantasies and pleasures that have as yet been unfulfilled. Each of these accomplishments, ideally, would be completed before either, or both, 'kick the bucket.'

The humor that follows is brilliant. Amazing one can laugh so hard and so often about a horrible disease like cancer. Nicholson and Freeman make it not only easy, but expected.

The LA Times, Variety and USA Today all panned the film. I don't agree with them at all. Nicholson and Freeman do a marvelous job . . . so much so that we saw and heard something unusual in movie houses these days. An ovation from the audience when the movie ended. We joined them in the applause. Clearly, our audience enjoyed it as much as we did.

Nicholson and Freeman know how to entertain people, not critics.

Guess that makes me a people. I loved it.

Go see it.