Due Date

After the sur­pris­ing­ly acclaimed ​‘lads on tour’ com­e­dy The Hang­over made just under $500 mil­lion world­wide, Warn­er execs were sure­ly in a state of fever­ous antic­i­pa­tion for writer-direc­tor Todd Phillips’ next mon­ey-mak­er. After giv­ing him the green­light for what­ev­er next popped into his head, it appears that Phillips head­ed home, got stoned and fell asleep while watch­ing Planes, Trains and Auto­mo­biles. The result: Due Date.

Harangued archi­tect Robert Downey Jr needs to get back to LA so he can see his wife (the dis­tract­ing­ly asex­u­al Michelle Mon­aghan) give birth. But after an encounter with the unhinged Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis at the air­port, things start to go hor­ri­bly wrong. Through a set of rather strained cir­cum­stances, the mis­matched pair are forced to dri­ve the entire cross-coun­try jour­ney togeth­er. Hilar­i­ty ensues.

Try as it may, Due Date nev­er real­ly man­ages to escape its rather tired ​‘odd cou­ple’ con­cept. It doesn’t help that the odd­er of the two is played by Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis, who recy­cles the exact same char­ac­ter that he played in The Hang­over. Only this time he has a dog, instead of a baby. His nev­er-end­ing array of quirks some­times hit the spot, and in a cou­ple of scenes they also strike a gen­uine­ly poignant note, but his watered down Hang­over shtick sug­gests that wor­ry­ing­ly he may be a one trick pony. He’s two films away – one involv­ing a talk­ing ani­mal – from becom­ing the next Will Ferrell.

Downey Jr takes a step back for most of the film, allow­ing Gal­i­fi­anakis to show­boat. The rare moments that we do get an insight into his char­ac­ter are sur­pris­ing­ly dark (a par­tic­u­lar­ly jaw-drop­ping scene involves him punch­ing a young boy), and it’s at these moments that you wish the film spent more time on the dark side. Instead the film relies on far too much fran­tic slap­stick and point­less cameos. Jamie Foxx, in par­tic­u­lar, appears to have turned up just because he was in the area and had a cou­ple of hours to waste.

Due Date is watch­able and will prob­a­bly make a seri­ous dent at the box office, but unlike The Hang­over it isn’t re-watch­able. We’ve seen both stars here before and we’ll def­i­nite­ly see Gal­i­fi­anakis here again. A smat­ter­ing of fun­ny moments and a lack of any­thing tru­ly detestable make it a com­e­dy about a jour­ney prob­a­bly best to be enjoyed while on a jour­ney yourself.