Just die, already!
The Bucket List (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:160
Fresh:67
Rotten:93
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: Not even the earnest performances of the two leads can rescue The Bucket List from its schmaltzy script.
Runtime: 1 hr 37 mins
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Jan 11, 2008 Wide
Box Office: $93,452,056
Synopsis: Academy Award winners Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman star in the comedy drama "The Bucket List," directed by Rob Reiner, a touching, no-holds-barred adventure that shows it's never too late to... Academy Award winners Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman star in the comedy drama "The Bucket List," directed by Rob Reiner, a touching, no-holds-barred adventure that shows it's never too late to live life to its fullest. A long time ago, Carter Chambers' (Morgan Freeman) freshman year philosophy professor suggested that his students compose a "bucket list," a collection of all the things they wanted to do, see and experience in life before they kicked the bucket. But while Carter was still trying to define his private dreams and plans, reality intruded. Marriage, children, myriad responsibilities and, ultimately, a 46-year job as an auto mechanic gradually turned his concept of a bucket list into little more than a bittersweet memory of lost opportunities and a mental exercise he occasionally thought about to pass the time while working under the hood of a car. Meanwhile, corporate billionaire Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) never saw a list without a bottom line. He was always too busy making money and building an empire to think about what his deeper needs might be beyond the next big acquisition or cup of gourmet coffee. Then life delivered an urgent and unexpected wake-up call to both of them. Carter and Edward found themselves sharing a hospital room with plenty of time to think about what might happen next--and about how much of that was in their hands. For all their apparent differences, they soon discovered they had two very important things in common: an unrealized need to come to terms with who they were and the choices they'd made, and a pressing desire to spend the time they had left doing everything they ever wanted to do. The list wasn't just a mental exercise anymore. It was an agenda. So, against doctor's orders and all good sense, these two virtual strangers check themselves out of the hospital and hit the road together for the adventure of a lifetime--from the Taj Mahal to the Serengeti, the finest restaurants to the seediest tattoo parlors, the cockpit of vintage race cars to the open door of a prop plane--with just a sheet of paper and their passion for life to guide them. Adding and crossing items off their list while taking in the grandeur and beauty of the world, they will grapple with the difficult questions and the even more difficult answers that plague all of us. And, without even realizing it, become true friends. With humor, insight, heart...and a fair amount of attitude. Sometimes you just need a deadline to get your life in gear. --© Warner Bros. [More]
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Rob Morrow
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Rob Morrow, Beverly Todd
Director: Rob Reiner
Director: Rob Reiner
Screenwriter: Justin Zackham
Producer: Alan Greisman, Rob Reiner, Craig Zadan, Neil Meron
Composer: Marc Shaiman
Studio: Warner Bros.
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Reviews for The Bucket List
At one point Morgan Freeman's character shouts, 'This was supposed to be fun.' I couldn't agree more.
Nothing wrong about a movie that says, Stop and smell the roses. Now, if only director Rob Reiner hadn't rubbed our noses in a bouquet of plastic blooms.
When actors as great as Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman can't make dialogue sound natural, you know the script is a stinkeroo.
A God-awful film that seems to suggest that terminal cancer can be a blast as long as you have access to billions of dollars, a green-screen machine and a philosophical narrator offering homespun bits of wisdom at every turn.
I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens.
A manipulative look at dying with dignity and a lame yarn about as realistic as the fantasy in The Princess Bride.
The sap flows freely in this geezer tearjerker...unless you're a sucker for...sentimental twaddle...you should cross The Bucket List off yours.
'The Bucket List' pales in comparison to the talents of its stars.
The Bucket List is a movie for oldsters that, paradoxically, looks as if it was made for 15-year-olds. If this is what is meant in Hollywood as "thinking outside the box," then it's time to get a new box.
A warning is in order. You may leave the theater with a guilty conscious, having hoped that both of them would just go ahead and die in order to put you out of your misery.
This terminally ill, terminally awful dramedy marks a sad cinematic milestone: The Bucket List is the first film in history to feature a truly wretched Nicholson performance -- and we're not talking about the character he plays.
Bucket's rush to sentiment leads you to think the film, not its characters, is soon to expire.
Reiner cannot reconcile the wildly different tones of the movie: buffoonish comedy one minute, treacly life-and-death melodrama the next.
The Bucket List never ascends from the bowels of tearjerk formula and audience pandering to a redemptive place of truth and art.
A feelgood, end-of-life flick that manages to overcome its sobering subject-matter and somehow buoy the spirit.
Like any diagnosis, things here can go one of two ways and -- considering the presence of its acting titans -- it's not a stretch to hope the film would traffic in truth, profundity or the slightest ounce of soulfulness.
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