Bucket List Is Leaky Schlock

The Bucket List, Rob Reiner’s new cancer comedy, “never ascends from the bowels of tearjerk formula and audience pandering," writes Newsday’s Jan Stuart. The film stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as terminally ill buddies trying to do it all before they die. They skydive, race cars, globetrot, and “recycle old screen personas with an abandon that borders on self-parody.”

Reiner proves he’s “the rare director who can take all the wonder out of the Seven Wonders of the World,” says Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman. Watching the boys chase adventure without suffering any pesky symptoms, Roger Ebert got annoyed: “I have had cancer, and believe me, during convalescence after surgery, the last item on your bucket list is climbing a Himalaya.” (More movies stories.)