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Peter (Robert Downey Jr.) tries to take the wheel from a sleeping Ethan (Zach Galifianakis) in the buddy/road comedy “Due Date.” |
Call it “Planes, Trains and Automobiles — Without the Planes and Trains.”
“Due Date” stars Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis as two clashing, feuding strangers who share a small car during a road trip from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
One is an uptight architect with a flair for expensive clothes and a problem with his temper. The other is a wannabe actor with a bad perm and a knack for abysmal clothing combinations.
How these two personalities survive their road trip becomes the haphazard plot for “Due Date,” Todd Phillips’ new raunchy laugh-fest designed to hold us over until he delivers the sequel to his smash 2009 raunchy laugh-fest “The Hangover.”
Unlike the uniformly unsavory characters in “The Hangover,” the characters in “Due Date” seem to be struck from the Judd Apatow mold: They’re guys who make us care about them in between bouts of complete self-absorption and frequent gross-outs.
Downey plays Peter Highman, an architect whose extremely pregnant wife Sarah (a comically challenged and miscast Michelle Monaghan) plans on getting a C-section four days away.
Peter first sees wacky Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) at the Atlanta airport where Ethan’s car shaves the door off Peter’s rented limo.
Oddly enough, Phillips introduces Ethan in a long, lingering slow-motion shot, the sort usually reserved for the first time a guy meets the hot girl of his dreams.
Except Ethan looks like a hairy, bearded traveler who’s escaped from “Grizzly Adams.” (Read more…)