DUE DATE

Did someone say "dead dad's ashes"? Well, then you know something "funny" is about to happen with those!

There's a certain formula to the road movie that leaves little room for originality.  It's true that if you throw two unlikely traveling companions together, you've pretty much got a recipe for comedy, but the scope of that comedy is still bound to be rather limited.  Though there's much to recommend the Robert Downey Jr./Zach Galifianakis vehicle Due Date, it never quite finds its way out of the box.

As the neurotic Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) prepares to board a flight to Los Angeles from Atlanta, his best laid plans are derailed by an aspiring actor and extreme misfit named Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis).  With just five days before the birth of his first child, Peter has no choice but to accept a ride with Ethan who is heading out to Hollywood to make it big.  According to formula, Ethan (and his dog) is as eccentric as he is endearing.  Just when you want to kick him to the curb for being disgusting and obnoxious (wait til you see the way he *has* to fall asleep at night), he'll turn on the sweetness and you start to feel sorry for this lumpy man with 68 Facebook friends who's carrying his dead dad's ashes in a coffee can.  Oh, did someone say "dead dad's ashes"?  Well, then you know something "funny" is about to happen with those!

Though I did find myself laughing my way through Due Date, I did have a few resentful flashes of "this is a rip-off of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles."  Indeed, many aspects of the film are derivative at best, and there's no great mystery as to its ending.  Will Peter make it home in time for his baby's arrival?  Well, yeah.  He definitely will.  The journey is amusing enough in its Todd Phillips (The Hangover) way, but again, there's little here that we haven't seen before.

DVD NOTES

DVD extras include deleted scenes, an Action Mashup, a Too Many Questions Mashup, a gag reel, and the Two and a Half Men sequence featuring Ethan Tremblay.