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Saturday, Jul 05, 2008
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Sanctimonious Bucket List a cinematic cancer |
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| Sanctimonious Bucket List a cinematic cancer | ||
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by Sara Michelle Fetters -
SGN Contributing Writer Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) is an egocentric billionaire who made his fortune turning the health care system into his own corporate piggy bank. "We run hospitals not health spas," he says proudly, not caring that downsizing staff and sticking two people in every room doesn't exactly make the patient feel as if they're getting the highest standard of care. Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) was once an aspiring student of history with dreams of becoming a professor only to lead a 46-year life as a mechanic taking care of a growing family instead. And while his educational fantasies never came true, he believes in finding the best in people, and even if he doesn't have a lot of money, good deeds should never be avoided, and a random act of kindness is a gift everyone should long to give. These two men never should have met, but when both find themselves facing cancer stuck in the same hospital room they end up igniting an unlikely friendship no one would thought possible. With only six months, maybe a year, sitting in front of them, Edward and Carter compile a "bucket list," a litany of items both have always wanted to do before death but have still never done, ultimately setting out into the great wide world before illness catches up with them. Along the way each man learns more about themselves than they could have ever imagined, crafting an everlasting kinship in a few short weeks most people can't manufacture in a lifetime. Director Rob Reiner's The Bucket List is borderline unbearable. While no movie featuring actors as magnificent as Nicholson and Freeman could ever be unwatchable, there were times sitting in my seat where whole thing started feeling like a massive endurance test. The picture is as saccharine as it is obvious, the sanctimonious clichés dripping from Justin Zackham's script so unrelentingly noxious they should probably offer gas masks to anyone unlucky enough to enter the theater. And yet the preview audience I saw it with ate the darn thing up. They laughed at all the sitcom patter, cried at all the holier-than-though three-hanky platitudes. Worse, they seemed to be able to forgive the blatant, almost shocking old-school racism of the final act leaving me more than a little bit aghast. This is another film where the narcissistic self-centered White Man is redeemed by the caringly selfless Black Man. It's so bad I started to wonder if I was watching a film from 1967 not one from 2007, the fact so many were so seemingly oblivious to this was nearly enough to make me hang my head in shame. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Nicholson has his moments, and even if all he's doing is playing a variation on the standard roguish Nicholson persona we've grown to know and love over the decades, it's still incredibly hard not to find this said persona awfully ingratiating. Same goes for Freeman (although if he ever records another solemnly pious narration, I think I might stand up in the middle of a movie and scream), and even if what he does here isn't anything new he's such a gifted professional it's easy not to care. But who am I kidding; I really didn't like this movie. Reiner hasn't made a decent film since The American President in 1995, a good one since 1992's A Few Good Men and a great one since Misery in 1990. And while he deserves praise for the five bona fide classics on his resume (When Harry Met Sally&, The Princess Bride, Stand By Me, The Sure Thing and This is Spinal Tap), he should be just as derided for the gallons of gelatinous cinematic crap he's made us endure the last two-plus decades. Rumor Has It&? The Story of Us? Alex and Emma? Ghosts of Mississippi? North? These aren't films, they're torture tests, and while The Bucket List isn't anywhere near as excruciating as those, it comes just close enough to being so. I still find myself wanting to shake the guy senseless and ask what the hell happened to his career. In the end, there really isn't too much else to say. The rubes of the world, so many of whom seem so willing to flock to anything that doesn't tax their brains too harshly or offer up anything too complex for them to have to mull over (Alvin and the Chipmunks anyone?), are probably going to be happy with Nicholson and Freeman's adventures here. For the rest of us, however, The Bucket List is 90-plus minutes of mind-numbing torture, and I don't need a second opinion to tell me otherwise. |
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