Saintly Morgan Freeman and rakish Jack Nicholson are practically parodies of their onscreen personas in The Bucket List. Freeman radiates Zen calm and wisdom; Nicholson tears up the screen with a performance so huge that it barely fits into the cinema.

The pair play terminal cancer patients who decide to fulfil all their ambitions in one desperate race to beat the mortality clock. Conveniently, barring an occasional catheter malfunction, their symptoms seem to abate just long enough for a series of adventures in glossy, exotic locales. They drive recklessly in vintage sports cars; muse on the nature of true love at the Taj Mahal and leap out of planes in search of whatever was missing from their two very different lives.

The message of the film is a sentimental homily you might read in a greeting card; its tone felt patronising and potentially rather offensive to people actually enduring the painful, humiliating process of dying.

12A, 96 mins

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