The Sons of Katie Elder

The Sons of Katie Elder
"First, we reunite, then find Ma and Pa's killer...then read some reviews."

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Due Date

If there was ever a mantra to live by in Hollywood, it's to strike when the iron is hot because you just don't know how long that iron is going to stay hot. The director of comedies Old School (a near classic) and more average flicks like Road Trip, School for Scoundrels and Starsky and Hutch, Todd Phillips hit the jackpot two years ago with the surprise success of 2009's The Hangover. One of the hotter directors around, Phillips followed up his hit with 2010's Due Date, a comedy for adults in a similar vein to his previous flicks.

Where Phillips is one of hotter comedic directors around, comedian turned star Zach Galifianakis is one of the most popular comedic actors around, thanks in great part to his hilarious role in Phillips' The Hangover. The director-actor combo teams up here again, and the results are equally as entertaining.  Galifianakis has been around in the spotlight since the late 1990s, starring in movies and TV shows while also making a name for himself as a comedian.  Given his chance to shine, he hit it out of the park in Hangover, and continues that trend with Due Date.

Traveling on business, architect Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) is trying to get from Atlanta to Los Angeles so he can be there for the birth of his firstborn child with wife, Sarah (Michelle Monaghan). Her C-section is scheduled for several days away so Peter has plenty of time...at first. Thanks to an incident on the plane with fellow passenger, Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis), Peter is taken off the flight and placed on a no-fly list.  So now what would have taken a few hours is going to take him a few days to get home. Making his situation even worse, he's lost his wallet with any sort of ID, money, or credit card. His one option to get home? Drive with Ethan who was able to rent a car for his trip to L.A. where he intends to make it big as an actor. Desperate to get home on time, Peter decides to go along, having no idea what awaits him on the open road with Ethan.

Sound familiar? It should. It's called Planes, Trains and Automobiles from 1987 starring Steve Martin and John Candy. Due Date isn't a remake of any sort, instead just using a similar storyline. It certainly has more in your face humor than P, T and A, and things have been changed enough to make the movie interesting thankfully.  The humor is easy, put two complete opposites together in a situation completely out of their control and sit back, let the hi-jinx and shenanigans commence.  It's traveling across the country. Has a cross country trip ever gone smoothly in the history of time? It's almost fated not to end well.  This is a genuinely funny flick though, partially because everyone can appreciate the hell that is traveling long distances.

What surprised me some was the mean-spirited nature of Due Date, much of that coming from Downey Jr. as Peter, a high strung father to be.  A character in a movie does not have to be easy to like, that's a given, but for lack of a better description, Peter is an asshole.  He seems to revel in it too.  He realizes he has anger management issues and has agreed to work on the problem for his wife, but let's say that Ethan brings out the worst in him.  The humor of course comes from this jackass of a man who is not likable in the least. You come to like him -- to a point -- but watching him lose his mind one interaction at a time is great. Downer Jr. is a great comedic actor, and he doesn't disappoint, going through ups and downs, lefts and rights around every corner on this trip from hell.

As good as he is though, this is Galifianakis' movie.  He gets all the great lines and ends up delivering some easily quotable one-liners for the audience. His Ethan is a spin on The Hangover's Alan, a little less crazy but with all the eccentricities and oddities still present.  He manages to make this character creepy, innocent, crazy at times, naive, innocent, frightfully slow at other times, an eccentric, and a man with no boundaries. Through it all though, Galifianakis makes Ethan a character, and one you like in spite of all his weird, little quirks.  It's his line delivery, his general cluelessness at what's going on around him, his physical mannerisms, everything adds up to make this great character.

While Downey Jr. and Galifianakis dominate the screen and don't disappoint, Due Date has a handful of cameos that play well off its two stars.  Former Wu Tang Clan member RZA plays a racially paranoid airport security screener, Jamie Foxx is Darryl, Peter's long-time friend who helps him out in Texas (sort of), Juliette Lewis is great as Heidi, a drug dealer in Birmingham Ethan goes to see, Danny McBride as an Iraq vet with a secret, and Phillips favorite Matt Walsh as a TSA agent. None of these parts are in the movie for more than five or six minutes, but they all make the most of their screentime.

The humor is all over the place here, ranging from good to bad.  Some of the gross-out humor -- Ethan's dog Sonny masturbates while Ethan does -- doesn't work as well as some of the more subtle laughs.  Downey Jr. and Galifianakis play off each other so well that their conversations are sublimely perfect, especially an acting challenge Peter gives to Ethan in a gas station bathroom that ends with a surprisingly real, touching moment. The physical humor doesn't disappoint either, especially some highway craziness that includes a breakout from Mexico. Yes, you read that right. A breakout from Mexico. Sure, it's crazy, but like the rest of the movie, just go along with it.

Due Date <---trailer (2010): ***/****

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