Due Date (2010)
Directed by Todd Phillips
Peter Highman must scramble across the US in five days to be present for the birth of his first child. He gets off to a bad start when his wallet and luggage are stolen, and put on the 'no-fly' list. Peter embarks on a terrifying journey when he accepts a ride from an actor.
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Like Martin Brest’s “Midnight Run” (1988), a film that is a legend among comic actors, “Due Date” is not afraid to let you see alpha-male, hot-tempered Peter verbally abuse the delusional, vain and at times hilariously effete Ethan.
Do you think, as in "Midnight Run" and "Planes, Trains & Automobiles," the guys might, oh, I dunno, get to like each other over the course of the journey?
Soon, you can't wait for them to get to L.A. Road pictures such as Midnight Run worked well because the characters were so much fun to spend time with, no matter where the road took them.
With Due Date, director Todd Phillips takes the "mismatched travelers/road movie" genre -- which also includes Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), Midnight Run (1988), The Bucket List (2007), Get Him to the Greek , and many others -- and does nothing much with it.
The problem with Due Date is that these moments are far too few, with most being a variation on situations from superior road movies like PTA and Midnight Run .
Not just any eye contact but the sort of prolonged stare that Kathleen Turner might have given to William Hurt at some point in “Body Heat.’’
What is especially peculiar about this alleged comedy -- written by "King of the Hill" scribes Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, with rewrites by Adam Sztykiel ( "Made of Honor" ) and Phillips -- is how frequently it stops trying to be funny altogether and wants us to have actual feelings for these comic-strip characters.
The droll “Due Date” screenplay is credited to Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland (both of “King of the Hill”), Adam Sztykiel (“Made of Honor”), and Phillips and probably another 20 writers e-mailing bits.
When this odd couple (and yes, of course, the slob-and-snob-thrown-together-by-circumstance plot in modern comedy dates back to that classic, at the very least) finally really bond, they do so over shared marijuana -- just like in " The Breakfast Club "! (This is the second studio comedy I've seen in a month that seems to believe that weed jokes are never-fail hysterical; when was I transported to an alternate universe in which Cheech and Chong entered the comedy pantheon?)
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Not since Diane Keaton’s mutt in 2007’s Because I Said So humped the furniture and licked a computer screen showing porn has a motion picture humiliated our furry friends so thoroughly — when monitoring on-set animal action, shouldn’t the ASPCA take simulated sadism into account as well?
The duo are always watchable, even as the movie is recycling gags and tropes not just from "Planes, Trains," but from the first " National Lampoon's Vacation " picture, the immortal " The Big Lebowski " and even, just for good measure, " Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back ."
And the things that happen to a coffee can full of human remains are outrageous, sure, but I can't say they're clever; "The Big Lebowski" did it better.
The duo are always watchable, even as the movie is recycling gags and tropes not just from "Planes, Trains," but from the first " National Lampoon's Vacation " picture, the immortal " The Big Lebowski " and even, just for good measure, " Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back ."
You, however, might blame this on the generic quality of the jokes he's asked to deliver: drug and bodily-function gags that he sometimes livens up with the quirky, amusingly allusive stuff that he's more known for --Â for instance, the deliberately bad Brando-as-Don Vito impersonation he delivers (his character's an aspiring actor) to a couple of pot dealers who aren't even aware of a movie called " The Godfather ."
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Sometimes they're funny but lightweight ("Road Trip"), sometimes hysterical yet tedious ("Old School") and sometimes they've contained the biggest laughs of any comedy that year ("Starsky & Hutch," "The Hangover").
It's not that a reworking of this familiar material couldn't be made funny again, but it would take a lot more imagination than this movie, directed by dude-comedy auteur Todd Phillips ( Road Trip , Old School , The Hangover ), seems willing to put in.
Director: Todd Phillips, who you'll probably remember from The Hangover, Old School, and Road Trip.
It’s a genre which has contributed more indisputably great films to our culture than almost any other, and no, Road Trip isn’t on that list.
…t’s been ten years since the release of Todd Phillips’ directorial debut, “Road Trip,” so it only seems fitting that he’s circled back to the place where it all began with another movie about a couple of guys on a disastrous road trip across the country.
Then he surprised everyone by becoming one of the most commercially profitable directors in America, with Road Trip, Old School, and The Hangover -- the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time -- under his belt.
The movie seems to be striving to be a comedy of tone and discomfort -- something in the neighborhood of "The Cable Guy" or a really dark "Bottle Rocket" -- where the humor lies in the sheer strangeness and meanness of the characters' behaviors rather than in overt one-liners and slapstick.