Ryan McNeil
In life, you can find yourself in some truly shitty situations.
There you are, flat on your back in a muddy gutter, rain soaking you steadily. There’s no wallet in your pocket, there’s fresh vomit on your shirt, and you feel like you might have a broken rib. And just when you can’t think it could get any worse, a train wreck of a human being reaches down to you to help you up.
And if you’re honest, you’ll admit that you’re actually having to think about things before accepting their hand.
DUE DATE is the story of two unlikely travellers. Peter (Robert Downey Jr) is an architect expecting his first child with his wife, Sarah (Michelle Monaghan). The hitch is that five days before the baby is due, he is in Atlanta, and she is at home in L.A. When he goes to the airport to fly home, he meets Ethan (Zack Galifianakis).
Courtesy of a wild series of events, Peter and Ethan get kicked off the same flight and score themselves a spot on the no-fly list. In the fracas, Peter’s wallet was taken so his options for getting back to L.A. become very limited. It’s then that Ethan finds him and offers him a lift in the car he’s just rented. Without many other choices, Peter begrudgingly agrees.
Unfortunately, Peter hasn’t even scratched the surface of Ethan’s oddity. Road trips can be trying at the best of times, but when one is forced to share a car with a socially inept, perm-sporting, dog toting, weed smokin’ wannabe actor…well…suffice it to say, Peter might have been better off walking to L.A.
DUE DATE isn’t out to re-invent the wheel…matter of fact, it specifically seems to be borrowing wheels from a film we saw 23 years ago. But what gives this film some oxygen, and allows the film to succeed is the performances of the two leads.
Zach Galifianakis has enjoyed a wicked rise to fame after breaking out in THE HANGOVER last summer. He has done so by playing characters that feel like a genetic splice of awkward and inappropriate. While there are still slivers of that persona in his take on Ethan, he has taken the next step by adding sadness and loneliness into the mix.
You might well have met someone like Ethan in your life. He’s the sort of person you don’t get in an elevator with…the person who will make you consider sitting on the other side of the lunchroom…the person who causes your hand to instinctively dive into your pocket desperately searching for a pair of earbuds.
The tough part is that Ethan means well. He might be completely socially inept, and evoke visions of a walking natural disaster, but he has a good heart, and perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to run away from people like him. After all, it’s sometimes when we’re in a fix, we might need to turn to them for help.
Robert Downey Jr. has a wit about him that has really caught audiences’ imagination over the last two years, so in a lot of ways he’s a perfect fit as the straight man in this story. He gets to express the collective disbelief without mincing words, or sometimes without uttering any at all. What he best conveys about people like Peter is that they believe to be above people like Ethan, but aren’t above reaching out to them.
Ethan has no problem being a smarmy dick when things seem to be going his way, and catches of whiff of getting things under control. However, the second things unravel, he constantly – somewhat amusingly – finds himself right back to leaning on Ethan for help. And there’s the paradox: the asshole in you loves to poke fun at people who seem to be at a lower station, but then you’re forced to wait patiently as they do the things you can’t – or won’t – do.
Downey Jr and Galifianakis share a sweet chemistry. In an odd way, they seem like plausible friends…in the sort of friendship that makes one side feel cooler and the other side more human. They share a few moments of very honest connection on this twisted journey, which of course is what makes things so much more painful when the next wave hits the shipwreck.
The film takes a few strange turns on its little roadtrip, such as a question over the paternity of Peter’s child and a wild pit stop at the Mexican border. Moments like these seem to stretch our good will a bit too far, and some could see them as one pratfall too many. The bit at the border especially seems to stop the whole roadtrip dead in its tracks for ten minutes, and feels rather forced. (Sidebar: In the Mexican border really “on the way” from Atlanta to L.A.?)
However, the funny thing about a comedy, is that ultimately they’re judged on a pass/fail grading system. If the make you laugh, and feel like two hours and admission money well spent, then the comedy succeeds. If you spend most of the time shifting in your seat, groaning, and rolling your eyes, then the comedy has failed. DUE DATE hasn’t re-invented the genre, nor does it have anything profound to say like some of the best written comedies out there. However, it entertained, made me laugh, and felt like time well spent. So based on that alone it passes, and succeeds.