Starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Rated PG.

Death is among the most common ingredients of motion pictures, but only when violence is involved. Sickness and aging are generally taboo topics, probably because movies serve as distractions from the moist and warty grimness of real life; you can watch yourself decline at home whenever you like, for free.

So give The Bucket List credit for tackling the subject of terminal illness, and being a comedy, to boot, about the final months of two coots who decide to go out in style. It’s an intriguing premise that the actual script does not come close to fulfilling, though we do enjoy a degree of wit and charm, thanks to its leading men.

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are the old-timers, and it’s a mental switch to see them as such. Though obviously seasoned veterans, they are in-demand actors; it’s a disturbing reflection of one’s own mortality to see them in hospital robes on a cancer ward, their star wattage dialled down to nothing.

Nicholson takes centre stage as billionaire Edward Cole. Cole has the financial resources to fulfill nearly any ambition but has not had any unrequited dreams in years. These are supplied by his ward mate, Carter Chambers, who is an autodidact much given to philosophical musing, the better to display Freeman’s richly sonorous pipes.

It is Chambers who develops the (purely theoretical, to him) list of things to see before he kicks the bucket. Indeed, his character does all of the work in the script. His is a variation of the wise-pappy stereotype of black characters, being gentle, giving, and thoroughly asexual; his principled refusal of an exotic encounter arranged for him by the generous Chambers is supposed to inspire but seems at odds with the movie’s “seize the day” sentimentality.

As for Nicholson, he works his own physical deterioration to disturbing effect. And though it’s enjoyable to watch him partake of fun activities in distant locales, it feels like director Rob Reiner missed a great opportunity. In Nicholson, Reiner had a fine scriptwriter and raconteur as well as one of his generation’s finest actors; what does Jack see when leering into the keyhole of death’s door?