The Bucket List

I went to this movie tonight with 3 other people. This movie was pretty much about death. Two old fellows that are terminally ill, played by two great actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

My thoughts on the movie, typical of our culture, showing a list of things, not all, but many that only a rich man could accomplish before his death. Typical, because we live in a consumer culture. This movie says that only a life filled with consumption is worth living.

Of course it does show that family is important, but they do not really focus on that. Most of the film is spent showing these two old guys doing expensive activities and eating expensive foods in expensive locales.

Then in the end, they have this epiphany that family is important.

They also played with the idea of atheism and faith. Morgan's character had faith, while Jack Nicholson had none. It might have been a more interesting movie if they had Nicholson, the rich guy, having faith, because he seems to get whatever he wants financially, and then the mechanic character with no faith, and then have the mechanic convince the rich guy that there is no god because in the end, they are both in the same place, but I guess that would not be as "nice" of a movie. Have them both with not enough strength to carry out the bucket list in the end.

I guess the other thing I did not like about this movie is that it was over advertised. I feel that I have seen it already because of all the commercials showing most of the good parts of the movie in order to get people into the theatre. As if two great names are not enough, three actually if you count Rob Reiner, the director.

Oh, and one last thing, the blue screen or green screen, or whatever they are calling that technique now, where they have a character in a location, but he is not there and they transpose the background behind them. They did not do that good of a job on that in this film. You could tell here and there that they weren't really there, like when they were on top of the pyramid.