Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/16/08
It
might happen tomorrow, it might happen next year, or it might not be until
2063, but one day each and every person reading this (and yes, shudder,
the writer as well) is going to die. We all know it: we might
not believe it, exactly, but we do know, and this presents us all
with both a burden and an opportunity. Because we know we won't be
here forever, we have an incentive to pack our lives with as much of the
good stuff as we can get our hands on. But the enormity of our impending
demise is so huge that thinking about it is kinda like looking directly
into the sun. As such, we tend to shy away from the knowledge and,
in so doing, to shy away from the opportunities that knowledge presents.
The Bucket List is a movie about two men who've spent decades living
like they had an endless supply of tomorrows, confronted with the fact
that they don't. Skillfully played by two of our finest actors, it
is at its' best a touching and thoughtful story about the emotional and
practical implications of our mortality. It too struggles to keep
its' eyes directly on the facts at its' heart, and at times wanders off
on tangents unworthy of a Grumpy Old Men sequel. But like
its' characters, it saves its' best for last, and the sentimentally inclined
had better come packing tissues. Lots and lots of tissues.
Edward
Cole (Jack Nicholson) has made a fortune converting state-run hospitals
into cold profit machines where a Doctor will be happy to see you sometime
this week. Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) is an auto mechanic who's
worked for four decades to provide for his wife (Beverly Todd) and children
while his own dreams went unrealized. But both men find themselves
on equal footing sharing a room in one of Cole's heartless hospitals when
they are diagnosed with advanced cases of cancer. They bond over
the rigors of their chemotherapy and when both finally receive the harsh
news that they've less than a year to live, Edward latches onto a crumbled
piece of paper Carter was writing on as their mission in what remains of
their lives. It's a “Bucket List”: a litany of things the dying
men want to do before their time runs out. Carter has started with
simple ideas: “Witness something truly majestic”, “Help a complete
stranger for the good”, “Laugh until I cry”, to which Edward adds a few
more grandiose ones like “Skydive” and “Kiss the most beautiful woman in
the world”. He's got all the money he can ask for to underwrite their
journey, and Carter, facing the end of a life barely lived, is excited
both to grab hold of this adventure and to get away from Virginia.
So they go, climbing pyramids, racing cars, seeing the world. But
even in their final days, there must be more to life than an endless road
trip... right?
Like
Edward and Carter, The Bucket List gets sidetracked for most of
its' middle third by that trip, which consists mostly of one pointless
but trailer-friendly sequence after another of Old Guys Skydiving, Old
Guys Driving Really Fast, and Old Guys Racing Down the Great Wall of China
on a Motorcycle. Making matters worse is that the Odd Couple
bickering that goes on between them in these scenes is fairly out of character
with who they are in the rest of the film. But these scenes are more
filler than painful, so they can only detract so much from the stronger
stuff that surrounds them. After a few bumpy opening scenes setting
up the admittedly contrived situation (I think Edward would be willing
to take the negative publicity hit it would cause to make an exception
to his “2 Beds to a Room, No Exceptions” policy for himself, or at least
go to a hospital he didn't own), the slowly building chemistry between
the actors is formidable. And once the trip breaks down and they're
left to pick up the pieces of what remains of their lives, the final half
hour is pure gold. Writer Justin Zackham comes up with more and more
heart-tugging reasons to check off each of the remaining items on the list
as well as a sensationally clever wrap-around structure that delivers a
huge payoff at the end.
This
is a star vehicle, and as such neither Nicholson nor Freeman must venture
far outside their established personas, but that also doesn't force them
to mess with what works. Their respective positions as Hedonist and
Wise Man also allow for interesting discussions of relevant topics ranging
from whether there is a God to the looming choice between burial and cremation.
It's a tribute to the sparkle both actors still have at the age of 70 that
these conversations do not become too maudlin or despairing: Edward
and Carter are not running so much from their mortality as the period it
would put on misspent lives. They're accompanied much of the time
by Sean Hayes as Edward's assistant Thomas. He's pitch-perfect in
a role with little characterization but a pivotal scene near the end.
It's easy to buy him as someone who puts up with seemingly endless abuse
that would really sour us on Edward if Hayes didn't take it so well.
Todd's role is a little more problematic: it's easy to agree with
Carter's desire to run from their stale marriage and her relentless carping,
but she too has some good scenes near the end that help to make up for
it. A movie like this benefits from the budget to bring in someone
like Rob Morrow for the small but pivotal role of the doctor who has nothing
but bad news to offer: Dr. Hollins isn't uncaring, but his bedside
manner is awkward at best, and a quality actor in the role helps to keep
him from being a cartoon.
What
Edward and Carter have, of course, is a certain kind of Movie Fantasy Cancer,
which starts out really bad so we know it means business and then allows
the men to be healthier and more robust as the end draws closer.
It's the same illness that's afflicted generations of movie Doc Hollidays,
and, most famously, Ali MacGraw. But The Bucket List wouldn't
really work if their illnesses felt more real: as Carter says about
the list itself, “It's supposed to be a metaphor” and I had no trouble
accepting it as such. Tears flow freely at the end, and it's the
kind of movie that doesn't say anything that's not worth hearing.
The unsentimental will, of course, scoff, but the movie's message isn't
just for the terminally ill. The end is coming for us all, and it
wouldn't hurt to get to work on that list while you still can. |
