The Bucket List (3 stars)
Directed by Rob Reiner. Written by Justin Zackham. With Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Rob Morrow and Beverly Todd. (PG-13)
In youth-obsessed America, it’s always interesting to see our celebrities age. There are those who peak early and disappear or die (Tatum O’Neal and James Dean); there are those who don’t find true success until their later years (Burgess Meredith and Ian McKellen). There are those who peak early but continue despite diminishing returns (Marlon Brando and Orson Welles). Then there are those who work for years, finding a way to age gracefully in the eyes of their public, always growing, who, without resorting to caricature, manage to show us what it means to grow old. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are two of those actors. In The Bucket List, they, along with director Rob Reiner, have created a film of surprising emotional impact simply by letting us see these men grow old. What could have been an empty exercise in denial instead becomes an affirmation of life well lived.
Freeman’s stentorian voiceover—always a pleasure to hear—opens the film, describing the death of his friend Edward Cole (Nicholson), telling us, “His eyes were closed, and his heart was open.” From there, we travel back to see how these men, one a taxi mechanic, the other a billionaire magnate, met. Freeman’s Carter Chambers is an autodidact and family man who once dreamed of being a history professor before his growing family took precedence. Edward Cole, rich but alone, has built his empire by privatizing medical care, only to find himself, cancer-stricken, sharing a room with Chambers in one of his own hospitals. Drawn together by sickness and the intimacy of a room so small that nothing is overlooked, they forge a bond that neither fully understands.
As a bloated, pasty patient, Nicholson is at his best, barking out orders to his harried but ultimately loving assistant (Sean Hayes, giving as good as he gets from Nicholson) and making the most of his aging physique; in many scenes, his swollen, serpentine tongue takes center stage, telegraphing his Dionysian love of food and drink. It’s a fearless performance for the actor, full of the small humiliations of old age, and all the more surprising when coming from Nicholson, who for so long has seemed beholden to his own earlier alpha-male performances. Indeed, much of the film seems a commentary on the careers of its leads, the brash, profane Nicholson bumping up against the sedate and dignified Freeman.
In their shared room, it’s Chambers who begins the list that gives the film its title—the bucket list being a series of things to accomplish before “kicking the bucket.” Originally meant as metaphor—a way of dealing with a life proscribed—Cole’s vast wealth means the two can make the list a reality. Chambers, uncertain about his decades-old marriage, agrees against his wife’s wishes to head out with Cole for a bit of adventure.
Along the way they visit China, India, Africa and France, slowly learning more about each other and coming to see the importance of family in their lives—Cole, it’s revealed, has a family secret that haunts him. Only in the final act, though, do we see what the influence that each man has had on the other ultimately means, as an unexpected turn of events upends much of what came before.
It’s surprising that Rob Reiner, best known for his work directing comedies like This Is Spinal Tap! and The Princess Bride, should do so well helming a picture with such a heavy undercurrent of sorrow; perhaps turning 60 last year changed the director’s perspective. Whatever the case, we should be glad to have his take on a graying America.
27 Dresses (2 stars)
Directed by Anne Fletcher. Written by Aline Brosh McKenna. With Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman, Edward Burns, Melora Hardin and Judy Greer. (PG)
Anne Fletcher, best known as a choreographer for a long list of films including Hairspray and The 40 Year Old Virgin, steps up to the director’s chair for 27 Dresses, the latest, but surely not the last, romantic comedy starring Katherine Heigl, whose success in Knocked Up has screenwriters beating a path to her door. The funny, attractive female lead—that elusive mix that marketers hope will appeal to both men and women—is apparently considered rare enough in Hollywood that it’s enough to get most any picture green-lighted in the hope of finding the next Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts.
As perennial bridesmaid Jane Nichols, Heigl has seen her share of weddings—her closet is filled with the 27 dresses of the title, most of them hideous. There have been Western, gothic, and even underwater weddings. There have been cross-dressing weddings and Gone With the Wind weddings, but none of her own. Instead, she pines for her boss George (Edward Burns) and spends her weekends reading the Commitments column in her local paper, written by Kevin Doyle (Marsden) under the pseudonym Malcolm.
During a hectic weekend when she does double duty as bridesmaid, she meets Kevin—not knowing what he does for a living—and sees her self-absorbed sister Tess (Malin Akerman) spark a relationship with George at a friend’s engagement party. Soon Kevin is pursuing Jane for an “always a bridesmaid” story to further his career, while Tess and George, much to Jane’s dismay, head quickly toward their nuptials. Not long after, Jane discovers Kevin’s secret, and their relationship becomes more complex as she tries to reconcile the cynical Kevin with the tender words of Malcolm. There’s the usual back and forth quarreling of characters we know should be together, and a fortuitous breakdown of Jane’s car, which opens the door to real interaction between the two. Or at least real interaction by Tinseltown standards, which in this case means belting out an Elton John tune while standing on top of a bar. Ah, love.
Penned by Aline Brosh McKenna, the screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada, the film is in essence an old-style romantic comedy, filled with the misunderstandings and mistaken identities that have made the genre a staple for ages. In a film like this, there’s never a real question of who will reach the altar; the only things that make it interesting are the sharpness of the writing and the chemistry between the leads as they make their way there. By most standards, The Philadelphia Story set the bar back in 1940. Heigl is a likeable leading lady, but to raise the bar she’ll need a snappier script. Though it’s already being compared to films like My Best Friend’s Wedding, the reality is that Fletcher’s film more closely resembles a multi-episode arc of a sitcom like Friends.
I Am Legend (3 stars)
Directed by Francis Lawrence. Written by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Richard Matheson. With Will Smith, Alice Braga and Abby the dog. (PG-13)
Though based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 science fiction novel of the same name, the story of I Am Legend will be more familiar to most viewers thanks to one of its earlier film incarnations, the 1971 Charlton Heston pic The Omega Man. Vincent Price also appeared in a mid-’60s version whose title—The Last Man On Earth—neatly sums up the goings-on. Now Will Smith takes his turn in the role.
Smith stars as Robert Neville, who appears to be the lone uninfected survivor of a virus that has devastated the planet. Originally developed as a cancer cure, a mutated strain of the virus has led to widespread infection, killing off 90 percent of the world population over the course of a few years and turning the infected survivors into extras from a B-grade zombie movie. To survive, he hunts game on the streets of Manhattan during the day, when the bloodthirsty infected hide from the sun; at night he retreats to his home-cum-fortress, barricaded against the sick now on the hunt. Alone except for his dog Sam, he broadcasts daily radio pleas for any other survivors to make contact. In the meantime, he continues to search for a cure that will reverse the effects of the mutated virus; luckily for Earth, this is the kind of movie where the last man standing just happens to be a world-class U.S. Army virologist. Working on animals in his basement laboratory, he occasionally traps an infected subject when one of his vaccines shows promise.
In a film like this, where the lead carries most of the dramatic weight without the help of a co-star, the central performance will make or break the work, and Smith is up to the task. There are some family moments, seen in flashback, but it’s when he’s working alone that he’s doing his best work in Legend. When a deer he’s been tracking is pounced upon by a lioness, followed closely by her mate and their cub, he passes up an easy shot at months’ worth of meat to admire the rare sight of a family working together in the ruins. The moment says more about the loss of his own family than any flashback.
To compensate for his loneliness, he groups mannequins in his local video store, where he indulges in the sort of small talk most people take for granted in everyday life. That need for a reminder of what life was proves dangerous when the infected use it to unhinge him; the next scene in the video store is a quietly powerful piece of acting, as we see Neville finally turn the corner into desperation. Yet in one way, his departure from routine and his angry acceptance of his own humanity are what gives hope to his future: drawn into a situation he would normally avoid, he finally meets another survivor. Alice Braga’s Anna brings word of a colony of survivors in the hills of Vermont; she and her son Ethan are on their way there and want to take Neville with them.
What follows is a mix of the quieter moments that came before and extravagant shoot-em-up. It’s unfortunate that the filmmakers seemed to have skimped on the CGI budget, as the army of mutants that follow (so acrobatic and well-muscled they resemble a sickly Cirque de Soleil troupe) is so patently fake that it sucks out all the tension and emotion that Smith has spent much of the movie creating. So quickly does it become impossible to care about the outcome, simply because we don’t believe the threat, that the last 20 minutes of I Am Legend seem to belong to a different film, one we have little interest in seeing.