Due Date (2010)

  This was the second Christy pick for March and it has never become more apparent that our tastes in comedies could not be more dissimilar. 

She tends to favor slapstick phsyical comedy like Sex Drive or gross bodily humor like I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.  Due Date falls into both of these categories.

I heard this movie compared (unfavorably) to Planes, Trains and Automobiles but that doesn't really mean a lot to me since I also hated that film and haven't seen it since John Candy was still alive.

This story follows the impossibly stupid adventures of Peter Highman (RDJ) trying to get from Atlanta to LA in time to be with his wife as she gives birth.  He is thwarted in his attempt to fly by a wannabe actor/waste of oxygen in the form of Ethan (Galifianakis) who gets them both put on the No Fly list by saying the words "bomb" and "terrorist" on the plane.

Here's where the movie starts to get stupid.  After being kicked off the flight, Peter realizes his wallet was in his carry-on which is on its way to LA and he is now stranded at the Atlanta airport unable to rent a car or buy a bus ticket because he has no ID or credit cards.  Enter Ethan in a shiny new rental car headed towards Hollywood for his chance to be on Two and a Half Men. 

A normal person, in a city on business who suddenly finds themselves bereft of funds would probably use their cell phone to call back to whatever office they were at, arrange transportation back there, get their spouse to call the DMV for a copy of their driver's licence or just fax a copy of their passport to said office.  Problem averted.

This person gets into the car for a three day trip across the country with a man he despises.  And rightly so.  There is absolutely nothing redeeming about Ethan.  He is a self-centered, socially retarded pothead man-child with no concept of reality.  People like this are not endearing in real life.  They're the ones that get their friends arrested or killed with their stupid bullshit.

Peter has two opportunities to part ways with Ethan and fails to do so both times; once because he realized Ethan's dad's cremains were in the car (in a coffee can a la The Big Lebowski) which I can kind of understand because it would be even more douchey to steal the ashes of someone's relative along with their car, but the second time is inconceivable to me.  After a spectacular car wreck in Texas, Peter calls his friend (Jamie Foxx) to pick him up from the hospital and tells Ethan to go fuck himself.  His "friend" tells him that he should avoid bad karma before the birth of his child and that he needs to apologize and offer Ethan a ride. 

This is terrible advice.

If this happened to me, and my cousin came to pick me up, she would not tell me to apologize to the source of my misery.  She would offer to hit them with her car for me.  That's because she loves me and is a good friend. 

I know why the film-makers chose this way, because otherwise the story ends with a run time of 25 minutes, but that doesn't make it okay.  It's an utterly and completely ridiculous road trip movie without the surreal charm of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.