This past weekend, I randomly clicked to The Bucket List on HBO as a semi-joke while friends of mine were over, fully expecting to witness a small chunk of a forgettable, harmlessly unspectacular adult-money-baiter from two years ago, but ended up completely transfixed by the movie’s overt sucking and ended up watching the entire thing, shocked to find that a film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and directed by Rob Reiner wasn’t just a little lame, it was quite possibly the most egregiously bad movie I’ve ever seen.
When I say “Worst Movie,” I mean, “Worst Mainstream Actually-Real Movie,” and for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll set aside well-known atrocities like Master Of Disguise, Gigli, and in my opinion, the overall worst movie of all-time, Son Of The Mask, but in terms of regular, huge-grossing, not-totally-panned mainstream movies, The Bucket List may be the crappiest-looking, crappiest-sounding, and crappiest-crapping piece of crap that I’ve seen in years (crap).
To help convey/digest Bucket List’s totality of suckitude, I’ve broken its sucking into three distinct elements: The Look of the Film, The Dialogue in the Film, and The Wild Implausibility of the Film. Let’s look at each of these in further detail, because it’s pretty topical and important to society.
Sucky Element #1: The Look
The special effects in The Bucket List make Anaconda look like Planet Earth (not the documentary, the planet.) When Nicholson and Freeman are sitting on the pyramids (?), the background looks like a green-screen of a backdrop of a green-screen of a backdrop of Laurel & Hardy and the Curse of the Mummy’s Sh*tty Background; it’s just not a sight your eyes are used to witnessing when you watch a non-student film in the year 2007 (or any year post, like, 1975).
The scene where Nicholson and Freeman (henceforth referred to as “Freenich” to save us all time) go on safari is even less convincing, not only because they start singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” but because the film really lazily cuts between close-ups of Freenich in a Jeep on a set, pointing and laughing randomly, to VERY OBVIOUS stock footage of a jeep on a safari surrounded by lions. I swear to God, the cuts are about 1% less exaggerated than the Jebediah Springfield educational movie:
Sucky Element #2: The Dialogue
The actual Bucket List was just a piece of paper with scribbled-on handwriting,
“Awful Fake Landmark Scene / Vague Deep Conversation About Nothing [Repeat x 100]“
On one particularly poignant occassion, Jack Nicholson gives his assistant his three rules to live by: “Never pass up a back rub, never waste a hard-on, and never trust a fart.”
Never trust a fart?? What does that even mean? Did a human write that, or was it a discarded byproduct of theoretical monkeys trying to hammer out Hamlet? That line wouldn’t even be scribbled on a bathroom stall in the show Salute Your Shorts. Was the script written with MAD Libs?
The Freenich auto race is the least exciting scene ever filmed in cinematic history, and I’m including home movies of myself at age 2 trying to eat Matchbox cars. The sound mixer clearly wrestled with the Catch-22, “What do I allow the audience to hear, ZZ Top or this brain-searing dialogue? Will I get fired if I just leave this thing mute?”
You can picture the producers’ conversations, “What do audience goers in their fifties think is ‘rad’ and ‘into your face’?” “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin?” [TOGETHER:] “ZZ TOP SONG!!!”
The film also opens with Jack Nicholson’s character, a cranky hospital owner, vehemently arguing that his hospital needs “two people to a room, no exceptions.” Then, when he gets diagnosed with his illness and he’s in his hospital room one minute later, he’s crying for his own room, and his assistant reminds him “Remember your policy? Two people to a room, no exceptions! Remember when you said that in the last scene, a few seconds ago? Now you are believing the opposite of that you bad man! Everyone from the audience is following this, right? We don’t want to go too fast for you. Let me back up. Jack Nicholson’s character owns the hospital…” Etc. (stands for et suckera! Heyyyo!!!)
Sucky Element #3: The Implausibility
The film is about two hopelessly ill cancer patients. The hopelessly ill cancer patients decide that while they are in treatment for their hopeless cancer illnesses, they ought to climb a Himalayan mountain, ride motorcycles down the Great Wall Of China, spend incalculable hours on planes going from time zone to time zone and eating different foods, and basically, exerting themselves in a manner that would seem superhuman for regular, fit people, let alone people with frickin’ terminal cancer who just got out of the hospital.
Roger Ebert, who gives the movie one star (high five!), elaborates: “I’ve never had chemo, as Edward and Carter must endure, but I have had cancer, and believe me, during convalescence after surgery the last item on your bucket list is climbing a Himalaya. Your list is more likely to be topped by keeping down a full meal, having a triumphant bowel movement, keeping your energy up in the afternoon, letting your loved ones know you love them, and convincing the doc your reports of pain are real and not merely disguising your desire to become a drug addict.”
And for good measure, Morgan Freeman’s bucket list doesn’t even say stuff like “Taj Mahal,” “Great Wall Of China,” it’s just a collection of really vague potential instances like “fall in love at first sight” and “witness a true miracle.” THE MOVIE IS CALLED “THE BUCKET LIST” AND HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO WRITE A BUCKET LIST. AND THEY’RE RECOVERING FROM CANCER TREATMENT AND CLIMBING EM EFFING HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS WITHOUT EVEN BEING SHORT OF BREATH. I’M FINISHING THIS ENTIRE POST IN CAPS SO YOU KNOW I MEAN BUSINESS.
I can’t decide on an appropriate parting shot — I’m thinking either, “More like, The SUCKIT List!” or “This Movie Is A Complete Insult To Anyone With Cancer, Who Knows Someone Who’s Ever Suffered From Cancer, Or Who’s Ever Seen A Movie For That Matter.” The first one’s a little tidier.
MORE LIKE, THE SUCKIT LIST!!!
