The Bucket List

The title of Rob Reiner’s film comes from a screenwriter’s own notebook. Justin Zackham kept a list of things to do before he kicked the bucket; its first item was to get a film made at a major studio, and this is the film that closed it. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman had known each other since Easy Rider but never acted together before this. The release was timed to the calendar: a handful of screens on 25 December 2007, wide only on 11 January 2008. The world tour was not shot where it appears. The pyramid scene was made on a rooftop in the middle of Los Angeles, which Nicholson calls “a mild disappointment to me”; the rest of the scenery is plates dropped in behind them. Reception split as sharply: the National Board of Review put it in its ten best of 2007, while the critics’ poll at the Village Voice tied it for worst of the year. The 45 million dollar production took 175 million worldwide. A good fit if you go in knowing the acting is in the hospital room and the rest is two familiar faces chatting in front of scenery. Not for you if you want to see the illness; once they leave that room the cancer survives mainly as a clock counting down.