You're in Atlanta. Your wife is in Los Angeles and will be giving birth to your first child in a week. Getting to such an important event should be as simple as catching a cross-country flight, right? Not if you are Robert Downey Jr. and you live in a Hollywood buddy road movie. In that case, you will somehow end up on the federal no-fly list, be forced to drive across the country with Zach Galifianakis and end up getting into numerous bizarre and life-jeopardizing events along the way. This is life in the movie ""Due Date.""
The biggest names of present-day Hollywood are all on board for ""Due Date,"" with America's current favorite leading man in Downey Jr., last year's breakout comedian in Galifianakis and the director who brought Galifianakis to fame in ""The Hangover,"" Todd Phillips. It even brings back the road movie, one of the film industry's tried and true formulas. ""Due Date"" has all of the pieces together to be a surefire hit, but not necessarily all of the pieces fit. And while it doesn't exactly fire on all cylinders, it does work well enough to be fairly enjoyable.
Much of the movie's success is owed to Downey Jr., as ""Due Date"" proves him to be one of the most effective comic foils working today. With a character as off-kilter as Galifianakis' to counterbalance, ""Due Date"" desperately needed a very relatable core to keep the film grounded. Downey Jr. is able to do just that with his persistently perturbed temperament, and his ability to keep his reactions to various obscene situations in proportion without ever losing the audience's sympathy.
Galifianakis is a different story, however. What made a classic buddy road comedy like ""Planes, Trains and Automobiles"" so successful was that its wacky sidekick, in that instance played by John Candy, was still a very baffoonish character, but he was still relatable to the outside world. Candy's character was the kind of person we run into at airports every day. Galifianakis is not.
That's not to say that Galifianakis isn't funny. He does the best he can with the material he was given. Unfortunately, what Phillips gave Galifianakis is a basic retread of either material he has already done in ""The Hangover"" or material that he is ill-suited for. Many shots from ""The Hangover"" and ""Due Date"" are almost exactly the same if you switch in a French bulldog for Carlos the baby. And the moments where Galifianakis and Downey Jr. try to connect are never quite believable, as at no point does ""Due Date"" provide any reason that Downey Jr. should like Galifianakis––at most he could only pity him.
Much of the blame for this lies with Phillips, who despite helming massive comedy hits like ""The Hangover"" and ""Old School"" has not shown himself to be a terribly talented filmmaker. Both of those films relied on a simple concept and a quality cast, which for the most part was enough. But at any point where more was demanded of Phillips he would come up short, leading to gags that felt disjointed, supporting characters (particularly wives and love interests) who were never fleshed out, and rushed conclusions. ""Due Date"" suffers from all the same flaws, suggesting that Phillips' biggest problem may be an inability to learn from his mistakes.
But thankfully for ""Due Date,"" just enough of the gags work. Cameos from comic pros like Danny McBride and Jamie Foxx are much appreciated, and they prevent Downey Jr. from having to shoulder all the weight of the film. So while ""Due Date"" will never be mistaken for road movie classics, it still brings enough chuckles from the chaotic lives of fictional travelers to make the real lives of viewers just a bit funnier.
