By Jonathan Kiefer

The season of serious films is upon us. It’s time again for the earnest, honorable pictures that like to quiet the room, just when you’re in a good conversational groove, to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention, please?” Which means, “May we have your award consideration, please?” It’s the major studio idea of autumnal dignity. 

Due Date is the joker who ignores that announcement, unsettling some and delighting others by muttering a funny, pissy tirade about what those serious films can go do with themselves. It works from a familiar setup: Peter, an architect played by Robert Downey Jr., and Ethan, an aspiring sitcom star played by Zach Galifianakis, share a reluctant road trip from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Peter is in a hurry to get home to his very pregnant wife (Michelle Monaghan). Ethan is, shall we say, less focused. All he has are his dreams, his French bulldog and a coffee can full of his recently deceased father’s ashes. It’s like an improv game: How long will they go, how far, how outrageously?

Answer: about an hour and a half, a few thousand miles, fairly. Due Date was scripted by director Todd Phillips and a bunch of writers with an apparently unanimous whatever-dude disregard for conventional character “growth” and story “logic.” It’s a movie in which an officious jerk gets increasingly fed up with an oblivious stooge, and neither man bothers much to improve his personality, just as border police don’t bother following up on their destroyed property and stolen vehicles. It gets by just fine on its stars’ contrasting charisma, with added flecks of mirth from Jamie Foxx as Peter’s college pal and romantic rival, Danny McBride as a redneck war-veteran Western Union clerk, Juliette Lewis as a weed dealer, and RZA as an airport security screener.

“A Todd Phillips movie,” its credits say, as if even calling the thing a “film” would be overstating it. Reportedly, Phillips has essentially admitted that Due Date is just something he tossed off to stay sharp while prepping the sequel to his raunchy romp smash, The Hangover. Speaking of tossing off: Some viewers will be glad to know that Due Date, like The Hangover, does find time for what now can be described as the Phillipsian motif in which Galifianakis encourages cute little creatures to masturbate. Before, it was a baby; this time, it’s the bulldog. 

If there’s any real ambition here, it might be to reconcile two threads of American comedy that split off, some decades ago: the distinct vectors of John Hughes movies and post-Hughes National Lampoon movies. When not squirming with profanity and misanthropy, Peter and Ethan’s comedy of mutual frustration sits relaxedly in the tradition of Laurel and Hardy; Felix and Oscar; and, especially, Steve Martin and John Candy in Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Although, come to think of it, that whole man-obstructed-trying-to-get-home-to-wife thing goes way back, if you count The Odyssey. How’s that for serious? 

Due Date
Directed by Todd Phillips
With Robert Downey Jr.,
Zach Galifianakis Michelle Monaghan,
Jamie Foxx, Danny McBride, Juliette Lewis and RZA

Dreamcatcher, Regal Stadium 14
100 min.
R