🎬 “Due Date”: When You Really Just Needed a Xanax and a Xanadu

Some movies are a warm bath. Some are a cold slap. Due Date is that thing where the faucet gives you hot water and ice cubes and dares you to act normal about it. Todd Phillips’ 2010 black comedy road film puts Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis in a car together and hopes they’ll combust in a way that’s both hilarious and meaningful. The result is a little Planes, Trains and Automobiles, a little Hangover, and a lot of “Why is this dog masturbating again?” It’s the cinematic equivalent of flying Spirit Airlines while someone does improv in the seat next to you, and somehow, it’s not all bad.

🛠 Development Hell, with a Side of Dog Hair

Let’s be honest, Due Date was a therapy session with a camera. After the surprise cultural detonation that was The Hangover, Todd Phillips decided to do something “smaller,” which in Hollywood terms means a $65 million studio film where a guy gets shot in the leg and another drinks his dad’s ashes. The script came from the 2009 Black List, Hollywood’s annual wish list of unmade brilliance, which means it was once loved deeply and then, like all dreams, rewritten into something the studio could market between Megamind and Burlesque.

The premise is vintage screwball: a Type-A architect (Downey) needs to get across the country in time for his child’s birth, but due to some ill-chosen words from a human tumbleweed (Galifianakis), he’s grounded and forced into a vehicular odyssey with said tumbleweed and a flatulent dog. It is the hero’s journey, if your hero is emotionally dead inside, and your mentor figure is a man who carries his father’s ashes in a Folgers can.

👨‍👦‍👦 Casting Couch (with Pet Hair)

Robert Downey Jr., fresh off saving Marvel and possibly your cousin’s screenplay career, plays Peter Highman with just the right amount of disdain to make you question if he’s acting or just genuinely irritated to be in this movie. Galifianakis, meanwhile, turns Ethan Tremblay into a walking HR violation dressed in linen scarves and sadness. Together, they’re a mismatched duo for the ages, if the ages in question are between 2008 and 2012.

Michelle Monaghan returns from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to play the “concerned wife on phone,” a role so underwritten that Siri had more depth. Jamie Foxx shows up as a suspiciously helpful friend, who may or may not have slept with Downey’s wife (spoiler: even the movie forgets to resolve this). And Juliette Lewis, reprising her character “Heidi” from Old School, sells weed and has a scene-stealing cameo that makes you long for the days when characters were allowed to be weird and female.

🎟️  Lowered Expectations, Raised Eyebrows

Critics were… let’s call it “polite.” Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 39%, Metacritic shrugged at a 51, and Roger Ebert, God bless him, awarded two-and-a-half stars and said it “probably contains enough laughs to satisfy the weekend audience,” which is Midwestern for “meh.” Audience reception was stronger, enough to earn it $211 million globally, which proves that sometimes people just want to watch a man try to suffocate another man in a moving vehicle and call it comedy.

But it also carried baggage. Due Date was hammered for being a warmed-over Planes, Trains and Automobiles, a comparison it leaned into so hard, it may as well have paid John Hughes royalties. It’s not without heart, but the movie wavers between acid and sentiment like it’s choosing a cologne. Its humor lands more often than not, but when it misses, it does so with a thud you feel in your spleen.

🧳 The Legacy of Two-and-a-Half Men and One Mildly Unhinged Road Trip

Due Date never became a cult hit, but it does linger as a curious snapshot of post-Hangover Hollywood: a time when Downey could do no wrong, Galifianakis could do no harm, and Todd Phillips could pitch a road movie with drug smuggling, border arrests, and a masturbating dog and still get studio funding. It also includes a deeply weird Two and a Half Men subplot that manages to be the most dated thing in a film featuring Western Union fistfights and ash-drinking.

The behind-the-scenes trivia is better than the film itself. Alan Arkin filmed scenes as Downey’s estranged father (cut entirely). The film shipped under the title Maternity Day. And Ethan’s birthdate is the same as Zach Galifianakis's, a detail that confirms what we already suspected: Ethan may just be Zach in disguise, if not in denial.

A Film That Just Missed Its Connection

Due Date is messy, mean, and strangely sweet, a movie that’s not nearly as funny as it thinks it is, but occasionally as moving as it hopes to be. It’s a two-hour therapy session where you laugh, wince, and then get hit in the face with a can of ashes. It’s not essential viewing, but it is, oddly, watchable. Just don’t watch it expecting catharsis. Or closure. Or basic geography, apparently.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5

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