This photo released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows actors, from left to right, Jack Nicholson, Ian Anthony Dale and Morgan Freeman in a scene from "The Bucket List." (AP Photos/Warner Bros. Pictures, Sidney Baldwin)

Other critics have already begun kicking at the "The Bucket List," throwing around adjectives like "sentimental," "manipulative" and "schmaltzy."

The film is, admittedly, all of those things, but I think there's a place for that in the modern multiplex.

Call me a loon, but I enjoy movies that are sentimental, even a bit manipulative, as long as they tell their stories with warmth and conviction. And "The Bucket List" does that with two of the finest actors working today.

Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson star as aging men who learn that they are dying of cancer, and despite vast differences -- Nicholson is a health-care tycoon and Freeman an auto mechanic -- they decide to live out a series of dying wishes together. The idea comes from Freeman's character, Carter Chambers, who once had a college professor assign him a "bucket list." You know, all the things you want to do before "kicking the bucket."

Carter starts with intangibles, including "laugh until I cry," but Nicholson's guy, Edward Cole, urges him to get more material. That means skydiving adventures, car races and whirlwind travels. But you can't take the romance out of a man ..... or a movie. So, "Bucket List" eventually ends up where you'd suppose, with each man becoming better.

Call it maudlin if you like, but don't call it bad. Director Rob Reiner has taken Justin Zackham's script and delivered a movie that reminds that life is great even when difficult. Throw in wonderful performances from Nicholson and Freeman and you have one of the finest films of 2007.

The Bucket List
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Beverly Todd.
Running time: 97 minutes.
Rating: PG-13 for language, including a sexual reference.

By Forrest Hartman / Reno Gazette-Journal