Rob Reiner‘s The Bucket List (Warner Bros., 12.25), the Jack Nicholson-Morgan Freeman movie about dying from cancer but also getting to fly around the world in a private jet, has been flunked by the Rotten Tomatoes chorus. It managed only a 48% positive (and if you read the presumably positive red-tomato reviews you’ll realize they’re half-and-halfers at best).
Best slam quotes: (1) “Any moron can make a bad movie, but it takes a special breed of schemer to make a picture as shameless as The Bucket ListSalon‘s Stephanie Zacharek; (2) “It”s a picture about two cancer patients confronting reality, and deciding how they want to spend their presumed last days, that has not an ounce of reality about it…Ikiru for meatheads” — Variety‘s Todd McCarthy; and (3) “Hollywood rarely makes movies about the dying wishes of poor people, since that might actually teach something about life lived to the fullest without global traveling…seeing this movie is not something you need to do before you die.” — Metromix‘s Matt Pais.
I’ve said before I don’t think it’s awful — its just tired and perfunctory. It wouldn’t have been made if Warner chief Alan Horn hadn’t given the green-light, which was primarily based on his long friendship with Reiner. (It doesn’t make him look very sage as he prepares to surrender administrative power to Jeff Robinov.) I will say that the CG shot of Nicholson and Freeman sitting on one of the great Egyptian pyramids struck me as half-decent, except for the closeups.