Story by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland
Screenplay Written by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Adam Sztykiel & Todd Phillips
Directed by Todd Phillips
* (one star)
It’s a good thing that this film was not a sizeable box office hit because if it were, the John Hughes Estate would probably have sued for plagiarism!
Quickly stated, dear readers, director Todd Philips’ follow up to his mega-smash box office juggernaut “The Hangover” (2009), is a failure. An unmitigated, tone deaf and nearly humorless debacle made even worse for the shamelessly tepid attempt it made in trying to emulate a modern comedy masterpiece, the late Writer/Producer/Director John Hughes’ “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” (1987). “Due Date,” no matter what its intents may have been, is absolutely nowhere in the same league.
As with Hughes’ film, the plot of “Due Date,” is perfectly high concept as well as clearly and cleanly stated. Robert Downey Jr. stars as Peter Highman, a businessman desperately trying to return to Los Angeles from Atlanta for the birth of his first child, via a scheduled C-section, in a matter of days. But, of course, his chances are foiled at every turn by the bizarre circumstances enacted by the equally bizarre oaf, aspiring actor and “Two And A Half Men” enthusiast, Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis).
Perhaps the best way to begin to critique this film is to illustrate just how much of Hughes’ film was stolen…oops, I mean, how much of Hughes’ film inspired Phillips. No need for me to be nasty, or overprotective. “Due Date” is an homage, right? Let’s head ourselves to the checklist, shall we?
1. An uptight, middle aged businessman
2. A socially awkward misfit, inadvertent perpetrator of all manner of calamities, who also nurses a painful dark secret.
3. A chance and confrontational first meeting via an automobile.
4. An expulsion from an airplane.
5. A misplaced wallet.
6. A worried wife waiting at home.
7. Curious and contentious interactions with small town locals.
8. A series of seemingly unending calamities starring a rental car.
9. The two men becoming separated from each other only to be reunited.
10. The heartwarming conclusion, placing the newfound understanding between the two men at the forefront.
In fact, all that’s really missing the film are the three following items: a train, the comedy and a heart.
Obviously, John Hughes did not, in any way, invent the road comedy genre. I completely understand that. But, what he did do with the genre was to inject his personal style, his unique brand of humor, his unequalled brilliance with character and dialogue, his worldview and sense of humanity. In short, Hughes took a tried and true genre and made it his own. With “Due Date” however, the proceedings work as nothing more than grand larceny. Furthermore, it only re-asserts just exactly how wonderful a film “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is and why it continues to endure nearly 25 years after its original release and the untimely passings of both Hughes and John Candy, whose hysterical and heartbreaking performance as shower curtain ring salesman Del Griffith gave that movie its tremendous soul. “Due Date,” on the contrary, is a soulless enterprise and despite a cute line of dialogue every once in a while, nothing sticks to the comedic ribs precisely because we have seen it all before and much, much better.
For a movie that essentially has two characters for the bulk of its running time, the storytelling contained within the characters is crucial and no matter how outlandish situations become, the characters will always root the adventures in some semblance of reality. In “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” Hughes worked at the peak of his creative powers as one of his greatest gifts was his attention to his characters, how they change and grow and the strict attention to who they are and their place in the world. The characters of Neal Page (played to petulant perfection by Steve Martin) and Del Griffith (Candy), throughout all of the obstacles and misadventures were essentially two sad middle-aged men reaching their perspective crossroads and emerging with a new outlook on the lives they lead. “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is a film cemented in social comedy and possesses a profound understanding of human nature while also being an absolute scream.
With “Due Date,” the seeds of an excellent comedy are all firmly planted. It’s the execution that fails the project so tremendously. Now, it is absolutely no secret to any of you, dear readers, that I was not a fan in any way of “The Hangover.” But, what did work in that film (at least during the first time I saw it) was the construction of the story and the comic mystery that gave that film its strong engine. As outlandish as the situations became, everything snapped together snuggly and also seemed to function within a certain realm of possibility. In “Due Date,” the story is let off of the chain and becomes a proverbial live action cartoon leading Peter and Ethan into situations that never feel plausible and more than a bit over-written. Situations are beyond contrived, and they have absolutely no connective tissue with each other. These are sequences that truly feel as if they could only happen in the movies.
Take the scene where Peter and Ethan are ejected from traveling via airplane. The moment of expulsion arrives through a ridiculous misunderstanding concerning terrorists and bombs and concludes with Peter being shot by a rubber bullet. I think the simple flight delays due to inclement weather in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” was an acceptable enough hurdle for Hughes’ travelers. Why did Phillips think that he needed to up the ante to such a degree? It just felt so prefabricated and beyond that, it just wasn’t funny. Furthermore, there are the sequences involving the doomed rental car, which receives such damage in such a fatalistic fashion that I felt that Peter and Ethan should have been killed at least three times over. Nothing about this film felt remotely honest, therefore I couldn’t buy terribly much of the supposedly hilarious situations.
But, my discomfort with “Due Date” rested firmly with the characters, such as they are, of Peter and Ethan, which remain criminally shallow from start to finish. They are essentially the exact same people at the end of the film as they are at the beginning and never at any point do they elicit any finesse or flair, which is a shame as Phillips is indeed trying to create a character based comedy. Unfortunately, “Due Date” is the character based comedy that has no sense of characters. Going back to “The Hangover” for a moment, a major reason why I did not care for that film, aside from its derivative nature was the fact that I did not like any of the three main bad boys even for a minute. They did not appeal to me, they felt to be more than a little mean-spirited and I just did not find them to be characters I necessarily wanted to follow for two hours. “Due Date” carries the same problem. Robert Downey Jr., an actor I have admired for so long again gives the film his all but after a time, it is easy to see that Peter Highman, like the trio from "The Hangover" is just a prick and there’s not much about him to latch onto. After a time, Downey Jr. appeared to my eyes to be bored, as if we could see that sinking feeling, that moment of realization that the film he was working on was not going to pan out positively.
But, the biggest crime in the film is Zach Galifianakis. Don’t get me wrong, I like Zach Galifianakis. He indeed contains a certain off beat quality that threatens to spiral dangerously into extreme subversive anarchy and I like that about his persona as his monologues on “Saturday Night Live” have shown so brilliantly. But, as an actor, I think he is such a unique and idiosyncratic talent that filmmakers, aside from the talented crew behind the HBO series “Bored To Death,” have no idea of how to utilize and harness his talents. Phillips has cast Galifianakis in two released films (and this summer’s upcoming “The Hangover Part 2”) so far and he has essentially commandeered the same performance from him. In “Due Date,” Galifianakis’ Ethan Tremblay is nothing more than an extension of his role in “The Hangover,” just odder, stranger and again, the type of person that only exists in the movies. Ethan Tremblay is an endless non-sequitur, a prefabricated sideshow absurdity whose best friend is a masturbating dog. He is precisely the kind of self-congratulatory and self-conscious ball of quirkiness that I cannot stand in the movies, making him a character that just never felt like he could exist in the real world. Frankly, this character of Ethan often struck me as a bit of a cheat. That there was something deeply psychologically wrong with this guy yet the movie was not going to deal with it in any way. Yes, I do understand that this is a comedy and I am definitely not trying to make it more serious than it needs to be. But, Ethan Tremblay took the vaguely effeminate “man-child” conceit to such a degree that it felt to be more of an “SNL” sketch character like “Pat” for instance, than one who was housing the type of inner pain that this movie wants us to believe in.
And so another one bites the cinematic dust. To think, it actually took four writers to emerge with something this imitative and comically empty. My extremely negative reaction is not a vehement one. So to speak. Just a weary one. Weary at the glut of movies being made and released from week to week that are mere echoes of better work and exist just to have certain A list stars on the theater marquee.
I have no doubts that Downey Jr. and Galifianakis will rebound easily and often. But for Todd Phillips, I just think that it is time for him to truly wrestle with the forces of his creative process. He is a good filmmaker that knows how to present and produce an attractive motion picture. He is a craftsman that does not make shoddy work. But, I am hoping that he may one day even surprise me, as well as himself, by realizing that he can be inspired by and even worship the work of John Hughes, Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis and John Landis without making his own work feel so profusely stolen, functioning as nothing more than the palest of carbon copies.
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