Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman have got to be Hollywood’s favourite septuagenarians, both having turned seventy (within a couple of months of each other) last year. And with age, it seems, comes thoughts of death.

But, of course, this being two of Hollywood’s hottest cotton-top stars, they aren’t going to do any standard movie about death. None of the “two old men sitting around and moaning” for these two. Nope, instead it’s got to be something with an uplifting message for their fellow oldies and something with commercial appeal.

Comedies about dying are odd beasts. Few of us, after all, like to laugh at death – at least, not after we’ve experienced the death of ones we love. That is part of the reason why the recent romantic comedy about a dead husband’s messages for his wife, PS I Love You, did so badly at the box office. Well, that and the fact that it was rubbish.

Death is one of the few things that pretty much every culture is in agreement on – it’s not much fun. Those few societies with death cults, and celebrations of death, are mostly deemed as odd as the black-clad goth teenagers you’ll occasionally see wandering around town centres in poor imitations of outfits from Marilyn Manson’s last tour.

It is this very idea that death is not much fun that provides the stimulous for the comedy here. Sharing a room in a cancer ward, where both are doomed to die slow painful deaths, Nicholson and Freeman’s terminally-ill old men decide that’s simply not for them. Why sit around in a bland, uncomfortable hospital bed for your last weeks when you could be out enjoying yourself, and sampling as much as you can of what life has to offer?

• Above: Morgan Freeman (left) stars as Carter and Jack Nicholson (right) stars as Edward in the comedy drama The Bucket List.

And so a road-trip kicks off, following the much over-used premise of things to do before you die. Only rarely before have two such likeable A-list talents formed the hub of such an exercise – it’s normally a lazy, low-budget, late-night show on a little-watched cable TV channel, or a space-filling magazine article, commissioned out of desperation by an editor who’s got a deadline coming up and needs something fast.

The film, despite being directed by veteran Rob Reiner, of This is Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally fame, is very much of a similar mould. There’s not much in the way of new ideas here, as the dying duo head off to go skydiving, racing classic cars, and take a trip around the world.

But with two such likeable stars in the lead, and with Reiner’s expert hand on the tiller, the end result is a fun and highly enjoyable, if sentimental romp. Quite deliberately the kind of film that American critics like to label “life-affirming”, despite the unoriginal premise and danger of turning saccharine, The Bucket List manages to do exactly what it sets out to – to provide an amusing diversion that can remind us all of just how much can be got out of life, even when all seems bleak. Exactly the sort of film, in other words, to cheer us all up as we contemplate another month of cold, dark days before there’s any sign of spring.