Due Date: Nothing funny about this one

Peter has a problem. Thanks to an unfortunate set of events in the Atlanta airport, he is placed on the “no fly” list and unable to make to back to Los Angeles to be with his pregnant wife. He reluctantly accepts a ride from Ethan, the man responsible for his troubles at the airport, and begins the cross country trek with the hopes of getting back to see the birth of his first child.

Director Todd Phillips is to be commended for trying to break from his gross-out comedy past with Due Date. The man responsible for Frank the Tank in Old School and the ultimate Vegas movie in The Hangover wanted to take those same over-the-top ideas and blend them with some serious emotional stuff for his main characters to deal with in his new film. Regrettably, the result was a movie that was neither funny nor emotionally fulfilling. Robert Downey Jr. did his best to try and bring something memorable to the screen in his role as Peter, an architect with some “minor” issues, and to be honest, his bits were the funniest. They were the funniest because his anger was usually directed at Zach Galifianakis, who played Ethan, and Ethan was so grating and distracting that one wished Peter would have left him on the side of the road and continued his journey home by himself. Ethan was so hard to stomach that it made no logical sense for Peter to stick around him, let alone befriend him, but three quarters of the way through the film it was like a switch was flipped (or rather the duo enjoyed using some recreational narcotics), and they were best buds. Those serious issues that Phillips wanted to explore (dealing with the loss of a parent and impending fatherhood) got lost in the shuffle of a bad note buddy road film that never really got going.

As a result, Due Date was an uneven, unfunny mess.

Grade: D