Due Date – Bwahahahaa! But that’s it.

• Director – Todd Philipps
• Cast – Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan, Jamie Foxx
• Genre – Road/Comedy/Buddy
• Watch Because – Galifianakis, Funny lines and moments
• Dont Watch Because – Tries too hard, Rushed, Unnecessarily long sequences, Missing situational humor, Does not live upto expectations
• Rating – ♥♥♥ out of 5
• VERDICT – As expected, watchable with plenty of hilarious moments but does not deliver as promised. Also, it is no Hangover or Eurotrip. WATCH for the comedy, but don’t expect anything more.

Due Date is good as a one-time watch, as a run-of-the-mill road comedy movie, but is far from being a classic or a path breaking production. Many sequences are unnecessary long, and there are a couple of sub-plots which should not be there. Funny lines are aplenty, but many of them are unoriginal and look and sound forced. Situational humour is conspicuous by it’s absence, and some incredible plot holes and WTF moments aside the movie feels rushed, almost as if the director wanted to wrap this up and start concentrating on Hangover 2.

Peter Highman (Downey), a high strung architect, is flying back from Atlanta to get back to Los Angeles to be with his wife when she delivers their first child. Her due date is just five days away. At the airport he runs into Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis), an incredibly over the top bumbling nutcase, Marijuana addict and social misfit. After a string of hilarious coincidences and Ethan’s stupidity, Peter and Ethan are kicked off the plane and included in the No Fly List. Peter leaves behind his luggage and wallet on the plane, leaving him only with his phone. Finally, with no other way out, having to be with his wife at any cost, Peter is forced to hitch a cross-country ride from Atlanta to Los Angeles with Ethan and his pug ‘Sunny’, in his rented Subaru Impreza. Peter and Ethan are so totally mismatched that they reminded me of some husbands and wives I know :). Peter is grounded, disciplined, groomed, choses his words carefully and by the book. Ethan on the other hand, is a social misfit: lost, addicted, asks stupid questions, has no clue as what to say when to whom and so on. The remaining of the movie follows Ethan and Peter as they make their way West across America, made up solely of incidents that take place between these two.

Yes, Due Date will make you laugh, but none of the jokes or the scenes are ‘sticky’, or truly memorable, save one or two like the masturbating dog and the airplane scene. The widely publicised ‘misfit’ theme didnt work either. I would like to believe that the characters were too much of misfits to be able to share any sort of onscreen chemistry. On the other hand, characters being totally compatible with each other would make a much more interesting theme, like ‘Dumb and Dumber’. Galifianakis is funny on his own, but Downey looks disconnected for a large part. As the promos promised, there is no trail of destruction left across the midwest. Only 3 cars are destroyed, and no friendships are broken.

The movie was less about the road and the journey and more about how Ethan could irritate Peter. There are also a couple of sub-plots in the movie which do not make any sense. A pregnancy doubt and a car chase involving Mexican police cars, which got resolved as soon as they started. The chase was badly filmed anyway. Jamie Foxx has no business being in this movie either. Oh, and a banged up car instead of the shiny Subaru would have helped.

Galifianakis and Downey try very hard to convert the disparancies between their character into comedy, but fall sort of convincing. Also, the road is missing. Most of the movie takes place at rest-stops, houses and check-points. I am a fanatical fan of Road comedies, and this is no where near to classics like ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ or ‘Sideways‘. Due Date tries very hard to become what it was promised to be, and falls short in the process. Road movies become enjoyable when the characters switch focus from the destination to the road. Here, that happens for a while, but does not last. Watch for Galifianakis and the few funny moments.