Due Date

Great. Normally the problem is getting things to post. With this, it's getting it to wait until I want it to post.

I feel like the obvious comparison for Due Date is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which is a high standard to try and match. I don't think it quite makes it. Not that Due Date is bad, it's quite funny at times, but it lacks something that older film had. Maybe that Peter (Downey), and Ethan (Zack Galifinakis, I spelled that completely wrong, didn't I) are more extremes than Steve Martin and John Candy. Peter and Ethan both seem worse at interacting with people than Martin and Candy's characters, just in completely different ways.

I found I warmed up to Due Date after Peter finds that he can't leave Ethan at the rest stop. Maybe because it was the nicest thing he'd done so far (I'd expected him to give Ethan so props for the improv bit in the restroom), or maybe because it settled the matter of why they continued to travel together. Ethan's nice enough to let Peter ride along (or so it appears), and Peter's not a big enough jerk to completely abandon the guy who gave him a ride. At any rate, after that point, I found myself laughing a lot more. The bit outside the hospital, where Peter completely loses it on Ethan (and his dog) worked especially well for me.

Watching the movie, I was left wondering if Downey's ever played a character like Ethan. He plays characters who are funny, but all the times I've seen him, they're dryly sarcastic types, who are funny for their biting wit, or when their control snaps, and they explode. I haven't seen him play a hapless goofball before. I know he played Chaplin, but I haven't seen that, and I don't know if it counts, since he'd be trying to ape Chaplin's style. I'm not even sure Chaplin's style would be what I was thinking of.