When watching “The Bucket List,” I had a tough time deciding whether or not it was so audaciously stupid it was brilliant or just, you know, stupid.

On the one hand, you have your respectable Morgan Freeman voice-over narration – ala “The Shawshank Redemption” – setting the tone for one of those enjoyably didactic tales where the viewer comes to appreciate that, yes, it’s a wonderful life.

On screen he plays Carter Chambers, a smart, trivia-savvy auto mechanic who seems content enough in life but has played his cards conservatively.

Then enters Jack Nicholson who tends to be hit-or-miss in his latter days of overacting bravado. He plays Edward Cole, a wealthy, cantankerous son-of-a-gun who privatizes hospitals with little regard to providing quality health service. He has lived larger than life, burning plenty of bridges along the way.

Everything changes for both when cancer, the great equalizer, lands the two men in adjacent hospital beds where each begins treatment and finds they have only months to continue living.

Both men make their initial assumptions about the other, but with nothing to lose, allow their curiosity to lead them into conversation. And it doesn’t take long for the two unlikely roommates to buddy up.

That could be a humble and interesting enough premise for a script, but this story is just warming up. Cole ends up finding the discarded “bucket list” of a number of things Chambers thought he would like to accomplish before the grave.

Cole teases Chambers for his modest wish list, which says he would like to “witness something truly majestic,” suggesting he should instead go skydiving and “kiss the most beautiful girl in the world.”

Initially offended, Chambers turns around and takes Cole up on his bold offer to go accomplish the items on the list. Cole’s got plenty of money to make it a go.

What results is a series of outlandish scenes of the two performing crazy stunts (tackling the base of Everest is quite impressive for dying cancer patients) – intercut with uninspired heart-to-heart dialogue where the two dully philosophize and reflect on their buried, emotional scars.

Nevertheless, there’s something about Morgan and Jack. Regardless of the flimsy pen-and-paper characters, the two maintain enough strange chemistry and star power to keep the audience amused along the way.

Granted, Freeman’s cheesy fact-spouting gets a tad annoying, and I was more in awe of Nicholson. I can only recycle the word “audacious” to describe his performance of a character so sloppy and yet completely innocent. He’s like a spoiled child. Nicholson milks the overacting to a new level and comes off completely lovable.

In the end, I imagine director Rob Reiner must know his latest dramedy is also total fantasy. It may not achieve greatness, but it hearkens back to the black-and-white days of screwball where such caricatures and zany plots made true gems out of light material.

But I say wait for this one on DVD.