Review of Due Date (2010) by Ubundu — 03 Aug 2013

Don't be fooled by its invisible title- 'Due Date' is a rare gem. No more than a comedy, but no less than it either, it is the movie you want to see if you miss laughing from your heart and brain, and if you want to remember that feeling for some time before its stolen by slapstick senselessness.

This comedy does not have a bucketful of curses, wise lines and pranks, nor needs it, for it has a forgotten true sense of humor and therefore-excellent rhythm between funny and serious. Most uniquely however, it has excavated humor's vital ingredient-a story from reality, extraordinary enough to tell, but that can befall us all.

Everyone can identify with the tale of expecting to wake up to a normal day and easily fulfill one's plans, when the prankster of life suddenly makes it all go extremely wrong. And everyone can laugh at its tragic comedy, however often it has been told, especially when it is highlighted in a character who doesn't see it coming at all. A fully socially proper, politically correct and controlled, technologically supported and psychologically eloquent modern husband and careerist who even knows when his child will be exactly born.

Especially when he is played by Mr. Robert Downey Junior, who is so brilliant and believable in this role, that one takes it to be truly him. But for the excellently chosen subtle strangeness in his face and demeanor, that is eventually fully blown out by his co-star and co-traveler Mr. Galifianakis who excellently plays his annoying, ludicrous, socially intolerable and unconstrained opposite.

Even though the film itself leads to the conclusion that it is all about their hilarious mismatch and misfortune of traveling together cross country that is forced on Robert Downey by Galifianakis, and that will end in life-changing friendship, this is a comedy that perhaps hides a deeper message. By causing utter havoc to one modern man's plans, it destroys his metrosexual mask, it dares to reveal his humanity and suppressed rage underneath it, with the falsehood of the signs of our times he every so often bumps into on his long journey home. The words one must not utter in an airplane, the politically correct way of dealing with nasty children, and our wives' best friends writing them e-mails.