The Bucket List

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman have nothing in common but cancer and a shared hospital room in the most insipid film ever made about living it up before passing away. The "bucket list" of the title is the list of things you want to do before you "kick the bucket." As Freeman reminds us, it's supposed to be a metaphor, but this is one of those films that takes everything literally while spinning it into trite, tired fantasy (it just so happens that Nicholson's grumpy old man is a billionaire mogul who funds the whole thing out of petty cash). "I've taken baths deeper than you," Freeman remarks to Nicholson at one point, inadvertently passing judgment on the film itself. The pleasure of their company wears thin in such threadbare scripting and rote filmmaking. Rob Reiner directs and Sean Hayes, Beverly Todd and Rob Morrow co-star. Features both wide-screen and full-screen versions on a two-sided "flipper" disc, plus the inconsequential five-minute featurette "Writing a Bucket List" and a music video. The Blu-ray edition features exclusive interviews with the stars conducted by Reiner, and a pop-up trivia track.