The RPM Show

By Adam Miller

“Due Date is a successful and hysterically funny road trip”

Todd Phillips got his big break as a filmmaker with the success of the 2000 comedy “Road Trip”. Ten years later he returns to that formula with this new comedy with Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis, who starred in Phillip’s 2009 surprise hit “The Hangover”. But this time he takes the buddy comedy and the road trip scenario, reminiscent to 1987’s “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”, and morphs it into one of the best comedies to come out this year.

Due Date is about two guys, Peter Highman (Downey Jr.) and Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis), who meet in Atlanta on a plane bound for Los Angeles. Peter in on his way home to his pregnant wife who is a week away from having a baby. Ethan is going to Hollywood to further his aspirations of acting. After having a brief altercation on the plane, Peter and Ethan are kicked off and are put on the “no-fly list”. Peter and Ethan end up hitching a ride cross country and throughout the ride they encounter lots of chaos.

This movie succeeds on so many levels and it surpassed my expectations. Now I am a guy who goes to the movies with zero expectations, but I had a few with this movie and here is why. First of all, of all the comedies that I have seen this year have not been good for one reason. They are simply not funny because they were ruined by the trailers that preceded the final film. In other words the trailer was simply a collection of all the funny moments and lines. Then when you sat down and watched the full movie, you quickly realized that you had already seen it and you did not laugh once because you laughed at the same moment in the trailer. This is where the film is successful because they kept a lot of the really good humor out of the trailer.

In addition to that, the film itself is a hysterically funny. It was to the point where the entire theatre could not stop laughing including me. If a comedy has that effect on the audience, you know it is a winner. I would not call it better than “The Hangover” but it is definitely in that ballpark. It has some extremely funny moments and it had many moments where you actually empathize with the characters. This movie keeps you laughing until the credits roll. I think it is worth noting that if you love the show “Two and a Half Men, you will love the ending of this movie. This is a comedy that really surprises you because it packs a lot of humor and some drama into the characters. And those are the ingredients for a successful comedy, the characters are funny but they also have some drama. This film has all of that and it is well worth it, you will not be disappointed.