Monday, February 25, 2008

Go to See the Bucket List, and Bring your Best Friend


I hadn't truly enjoyed a movie in a long time. That's why "The Bucket List", starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, came as such an enjoyable surprise. My friend Heather and I went to see it this past Thursday night. The movie had been in the theatre for awhile and it was a week night, so there weren't that many people in the audience. It was perfect! Stale pretzel bites, over-priced movie theatre sodas and dirty bathroom aside...this was a great movie.

Sharing the same hospital room, two strangers become friends through the process of dying. The portrayal of the stages of grief was fairly concise in nature, but the movie did try and summarize what cancer patients and families of cancer patients experience when they have been handed a death sentence by a busy doctor. The preferential treatment shown to the hospital owner (Nicholson) by the doctor, over the average joe (Freeman) is emphasized, and we get to see some of the bad side effects of going through Chemo (vomiting and diarrhea are alluded to during their hospital stay).

One patient is the rich owner of the hospital, the other, an auto mechanic. They find themselves roommates, each fighting a losing battle with terminal cancer. They become friends, through playing cards, having many conversations, and through their shared experience of slowly succumbing to the same disease.

Morgan Freeman's character "Carter" starts to write a "Bucket List" inspired by a history teacher, listing all the things he wants to do before he dies. He then gets the news that he only has about a year to live, almost right after Nicholson's character "Edward" gets a similar death sentence. Carter throws the list on the floor where Edward later retrieves it. He likes the idea, embellishes on what Carter has written and adds his own items to the list. Edward then convinces Carter to temporarily leave his family and go off with him to accomplish the things on the list before they both die. Of course, Carter's wife objects. Edward has no family to speak of that will miss him.

I won't tell you how it ends, but it is a thought-provoking and somewhat emotional journey. I highly recommend this one. Go see it with your best friend and bring tissues. You might need them.

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