In a season rich with holiday movies about family, friendship and fun, Rob Reiner is giving audiences cancer. Not literally, but the disease is the subject of Reiner’s latest film, The Bucket List. A-listers Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman star in the flick, reason enough to drive moviegoers to the theaters. The movie is about two cancer patients (Nicholson and Freeman) who make a list of 10 things they’d like to do before they die (kick the bucket, get it?). The movie is set to open January 11, well after the holiday movie rush, but will viewers be in a mood for post-holiday death melodrama?

Nicholson plays Edward Cole, rich and prosperous in everything but his health. Freeman’s character, Carter Chambers, is a car mechanic who adores trivia. The only thing they seem to have in common is their shared illness and certain death sentences. Heady fare for an early January moviegoing experience.

The plot unfolds when the two check themselves out of the hospital and take off to complete their Bucket List. They run around the globe doing all the things they’ve wanted to do, including skydiving and even getting tattooed. Usually, you hear Rob Reiner’s name and you expect high comedy, lots of satire and plenty of laughs – but The Bucket List delivers very little of any of these things. Even the magic the pairing of Freeman and Nicholson might have created is completely lost as the movie jumps from one scene to the next, systematically checking off items on The Bucket List. And since both men are definitely going to face death because of their shared diagnosis, fans have little to look forward to from beginning to end.

Reviewers have bashed the script and Reiner’s direction, saying the two leading men have little to work with. The end result? The Bucket List is a little boring, slow-moving, and damned depressing.