'Bucket List' is pleasant, if well-worn

It's a simple exercise: Make a list of all the things you want to do in your life, big experiences, noble goals, altruistic urges. From peering into the Grand Canyon to learning a foreign language or dating a cheerleader, this is what you will squeeze in before you "kick the bucket."

Needless to say, that list will change, maybe take on a certain urgency, if you learn you have a terminal illness. What's the old adage? "Nothing focuses the mind like the knowledge of impending death."

That's the premise of Rob Reiner's engaging but well-worn comedy "The Bucket List." Pair up a rich healthcare mogul and a working-class mechanic in a hospital room, tell them both they have months to live and let them work out a list together. The rich guy will pay for it. The mechanic-philosopher will fill in the blanks, provide "meaning."

Jack Nicholson devours the scenery as hospital magnate Edward Cole. Morgan Freeman is Carter Chambers, a guy who has had a real life, just not a lot of fun in it. They are two dying cancer patients thrown together who decide to make their last months memorable.

Theirs is a reluctant partnership. They have little in common. The rich guy is a loner, a bon vivant, a jerk who intentionally gets people's names wrong just to put them in their place. The mechanic is a kindly "Jeopardy!" fanatic, a reader, with a wife and grown children who love him. One has sacrificed family for a lifestyle and gathering wealth, the other has given up himself for his family.

But they're "in the same boat," as Cole growls, raising a Nicholson eyebrow. They shouldn't go gently into that long night. They should sky dive, climb a pyramid, "witness something majestic" and wander the Taj Mahal, drive that 1965 Shelby Mustang 350 one of them has always wanted.

"Bucket List" is a movie that goes down like hospital food -- pre-

digested. The "list" isn't that original, though the movie's travelogue elements are striking. If they faked sending Freeman, Nicholson and crew to Egypt, Africa and skydiving, they did a good job of it.

The casting is so pre-played that they landed Rob Morrow, years past his "Northern Exposure" duty, as a doctor, and Sean Hayes, not far removed at all from his "Will & Grace" finger-snapping, as Cole's fey and smart-aleck assistant.

There are big laughs and minor moments of grace in "The Bucket List." It's also fun to watch these two swap lines.