After a career which began with such cross-genre classics as This is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally, director Rob Reiner went on to solidify his reputation with Misery, A Few Good Men and The American President. Rest assured, this lengthy laundry list has a point. Since 1995, Reiner has not only not had a hit, but his films have been universally and critically loathed. And while the pleasant The Bucket List is certainly nowhere near his best work, it is easily the best film he has made in more than a decade.

Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) is a philosopher stuck in an auto mechanic’s uniform. As a student, Carter had to give up on college and take the first job he could find to care for his growing family. He now spends his days covered in grease, spouting encyclopedic facts to his co-workers and resigned to the fact that his young dreams will never become an old man’s reality. Business mogul Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson), used to a first-class lifestyle, spends his days gobbling up companies and converting them into profitable industries to fuel his extravagant lifestyle. The billionaire playboy has everything he’s ever wanted but nothing he truly needs.

Fate, that great social leveler, steps in, placing Carter and Edward in opposite hospital beds. Stricken with cancer, both men discover they have less than a year to live. Despite having nothing in common except their illness, the two men become the unlikeliest of friends. When Carter recalls his freshman philosophy professor’s suggestion that the students compose a “Bucket List” — a collection of all the things they wanted to do before they kicked the bucket — Edward insists it’s never too late to realize their dreams. His deep pockets certainly help too.

Against the advice of their doctors and the protestations of Carter’s family, the two men check themselves out of the hospital and begin gallivanting across the globe. Along the way, they muse on life and death and the existence of God. Finding humor even in the darkest of circumstances, Carter and Edward discover it is never too late to live life to its fullest and reconnect with those you love.

The movie, like the list, is a nice, if improbable, idea. No, it doesn’t all work and some of the more absurd elements in the second half cancel out the earlier, unhurried scenes in the hospital where we are really permitted to get to know the characters. Freeman and Nicholson, two titans of their profession, play unerringly to type — the bad boy and the Zen master. Their on-screen friendship works precisely because they make such an odd couple.

Rob Reiner is a simple director whose films are always perfectly lit, impeccably glossy and infused with that new film smell. There’s rarely any room for nuance. Sure, The Bucket List is sappy and sentimental, but when exactly did cynical critics and contemptuous crowds decide that any film that touches our emotions is verboten? All films manipulate our feelings — The Bucket List just doesn’t try to pretend otherwise. With Frank Capra III as the film’s First Assistant Director, could it be any other way?

© Copyright 2007 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.