Review of Due Date (2010) by Shiira — 11 Nov 2010

"Due Date" uses the same template as John Hughes' "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", but the template is broken now, and it was a perfectly servicable template, even worse, 1987 called because the yesteryear wants its movie back.

1987 wants to know why every comedy being produced from the major studios pander to the lowest common denominator. "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", albeit formulaic through and through the entire running time, was able to telegraph its happy ending without the brazen disregard for plausibility that "Due Date" is guilty of.

Peter Highman(Robert Downey Jr.) is such a city mouse, the a**hole of a city mouse, the filmmaker should just let him be, without having to worry about redeeming him, especially since he's teamed up with a country mouse, the a**hole of a country mouse, who doesn't seem like the same character after both men are asked to leave the plane.

At the drop-off area, Ethan Trembly(Zach Galifinakas) is inscrutable; he makes eye contact with Peter, a nonchalance that seems exceedingly bold, coming so soon after the car he arrived in, ripped off the door of the architect's taxi.

Later, while both men are standing together curbside, Ethan knocks over Peter's luggage and resigns himself from the common courtesy of picking it up. Once on the plane, Ethan walks to his seat as if the 747 was a yacht he personally owned, placing his carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment without the slightest acknowledgement that he's fat and an owner of a hirsute belly, haphazardly concealed within a buttoned shirt, aligned strategically with Peter's face, a magnet, as it turns out.

"Due Date" would have been a whole lot fresher had both men remained formidable opponents, but once they hit the road, the relationship turns hierarchical, in which Ethan stops playing "dumb", and Peter asserts himself as the sophisticate who doesn't suffer fools gladly.

The words and actions that Peter unleashes on Ethan are so hurtful, so rooted in class consciousness, they practically blow away the "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" template to smithereens.

The architect's contempt for the budding actor seems just too intense, going so far, at one point, as telling the "Two and a Half Men" enthusiast that he despises him "on a cellular level".

On another occasion, Peter slams Ethan's permed head on a truck, almost hard enough to cause a concussion. In the 1987 John Hughes classic, Neal Page(Steve Martin) may have disliked his accidental companion immensely, but his aversion for Del(John Candy) never coalesced into full-blown hatred.

It was John Hughes at his best that the moviegoer didn't mutter to himself, "Yeah, right," when Neal invites the big lug over for Thanksgiving dinner. The late Hughes was a humanist with a pragmatic touch.

With its over-reliance on a masturbating dog and drug-related humor for laughs, "Due Date" should have played off the sentimental tropes found in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" rather than recast them in such a vulgarian context.

It's hard to believe Peter when he says, "I love you," to his fellow traveller, not after Peter spit in Ethan's dog's face and mocks the Arkansasian man for having the rube dream of making it big in Hollywood.

He doesn't care about other people. The filmmaker establishes this fact early in the film, as Peter ignores the friendly driver who tries to engage him in a conversation during their jaunt to the airport.

We get it. Peter only talks to people he deems worthwhile. A car figures in a later scene, where Peter has second thoughts about ditching his "friend" after forgetting to throw out the coffee can containing Ethan's father's ashes.

Neal Page would turn around and go back, not Peter Highman, but he turns around anyway, because that's the formula, the steady progression from antagonists to friends, culminating in the scene at the Grand Canyon, where Peter seems exceedingly sensitive while encouraging Ethan to honor his father's last wish, and say goodbye.

This is total bulls*it. It feels forced. This loser means nothing to him. But a formula is a formula, which makes you realize how a film like "Planes, Trains and Automobile" covers its tracks much better than "Due Date", a funny enough film that might have benefited even more had Ethan been allowed to be Peter's sparring partner, not whipping boy.

That's the movie we see in the set-up. Interestingly enough, the sparring partner makes a cameo, soon after Ethan gets roughed up by Peter, when a loaded gun that the actor(remember: he's an actor) finds in the glove compartment, accidentally, of course, goes off, and hits the abusive architect in the leg.

It's a taste of what "Due Date" could have been, and might have been in the original draft: a dark road comedy.