In nothing more than a finely marketed product to sell tickets, Due Date is often as lazy as it is desirable, offering the bare minimum of laughs in order to bring in the already expected demographic.
I found this film odd from the very beginning. After coming off the biggest R-rated comedy of all time with The Hangover, director Todd Phillips takes the safe road with what seems to be a wackier version of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Unfortunately, this version is low on character development and high on forced humor.
It seems like something happened in the movie's post-production stage that caused a frustrating shift towards the whole stuff-the-screen-with-as-many-
What saves the film in any sense is its cast. Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galafanakis bring their A-games to the roles of Peter Highman and Ethan Tremblay, two strangers who attempt to travel from Atlanta to Los Angeles in time for the birth of Peter's child. Along the way, they experience hard times that always seem to work out, forced attempts at humor, and random scenes with Jamie Foxx, who plays an old buddy of Peter's. Foxx isn't trying that hard to continue his acting career after his breakout year in 2004 with Ray and Collateral. Instead, he seems to just be mailing it in.
As does the film.
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