A typical single-girl's Friday evening: on the elliptical machine at the gym.A typical single-girl's movie to watch while on the elliptical machine: "The Bucket List".
Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in a "preposterous, putatively heartwarming buddy comedy about two men diagnosed with terminal cancer living it up in their final months"? Enthusiastic thumbs-down from Roger Ebert, the Times (see quote above), and just about everyone else for being "maudlin" and "unrealistic"?
'Tis true. Especially odd when this is Healthworks, an all-women's establishment. (Where, in as clichéd a fashion as you might imagine, typical movie fare trends to the romantic. In this venue I've seen the rain-drenched-in-a-lake kissing scene from "The Notebook" well over a dozen times.)
Nonetheless. I got into "The Bucket List," as one can only do when chained to a repetitive-motion machine for 45 minutes. I got way too into it. When Freeman's character dies while in surgery (sorry for spoiling), we don't see it.....we just see the surgeon telling the deceased's wife the news.....and the wife's face crumpling as her son comes running to support her.
By this time I was on the floor, stretching into a yoga warrior pose....and my own face crumpled, followed by a gasping sob. It took me the rest of the pose to recover.
Granted, tears and death in cinema is emotional. I quickly assessed, however, why that moment made me cry. Because that was a wife crying, quite rightly, at the loss of her husband. And in that moment I felt lonely....wanting a spouse who would grieve if I died before him....having a child come and put an arm around me if I were to lose a lover or a spouse.... Two seconds of jealousy for the woman who had known a great love.
Maudlin indeed, for a typical single-girl's night at the gym.
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