Due Date

[Winston*]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm6qugdbyGI&feature=related

Didn't find the trailer that funny but Galifianakis and Downey Jr. are really funny so I'll wait and see.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Yikes. How could there be a two minute trailer with those two that didn't make me laugh once? Maybe they were holding back on the funny in the trailer so as not to ruin the experience of the movie? I sure hope so.

[Dukefrukem]

Looks ok.

[Ezee E]

So how long until we get tired of Galifinakis? Luckily, he has brilliant timing, but we've seen this character about five times within a year and a half.

[Dukefrukem]

So how long until we get tired of Galifinakis? Luckily, he has brilliant timing, but we've seen this character about five times within a year and a half.

After seeing this trailer, and the trailer for Rudd's new movie, I'm already tired of him.

[megladon8]

Yikes. How could there be a two minute trailer with those two that didn't make me laugh once? Maybe they were holding back on the funny in the trailer so as not to ruin the experience of the movie? I sure hope so.


This is exactly what I was thinking. Two of the funniest guys out there right now put together make...that??

[Ezee E]

Despite my comment on Galifinakis, I think this looks pretty good actually. Yes, the trailer isn't good, but it's an R-Rated comedy, so they can't really put in any of the funny stuff. Same thing happened with The Hangover.

The bit at the end with the truck made me laugh at least.

[Dukefrukem]

Despite my comment on Galifinakis, I think this looks pretty good actually. Yes, the trailer isn't good, but it's an R-Rated comedy, so they can't really put in any of the funny stuff. Same thing happened with The Hangover.

The bit at the end with the truck made me laugh at least.

I think I've decided not to watch trailers for comedies anymore. The Hangover trailer (and the Red Band one) completely took all the steam away from the actually move for me. I did not enjoy it the way other people did.

[MadMan]

This could be slightly amusing, mainly because of its cast.

[DavidSeven]

I really liked this. Not sure why the critics drubbed it. It's Downey Jr. being Downey Jr. and Galifianakis being Galifianakis for two hours. Some pretty decent filmmaking too. Certainly funnier, more tonally consistent, and better dramatically than The Hangover. Phillips is definitely more interesting as a director than most in the genre. Can’t figure out why this gets hated on while the critics lap up each of Apatow’s generically filmed comedies. Too dark or “offensive”, perhaps? Things get a bit over-the-top in the third act, but still very enjoyable on the whole.

[Rowland]

Very flawed, but I liked this more than The Hangover. Where that film was an ugly celebration of assholedom transparent in its patronizing ambitions (and often still funny I should note), this one is less audience-friendly, recognizing its essential pathology and rendering it dangerous. An excess of overly broad humor undercuts this to an extent, but Downey Jr. manages to keep most scenes grounded with his beautifully modulated, subversively off-putting performance, and Galifianakis gets to play a real character this time around, one who is afforded a surprising degree of respect between all the pot and masturbation jokes. The younger audience I watched this with responded to many comedically ambiguous scenes with nervous laughter between strained silences, which I admittedly found rather gratifying. Except for one old lady who guffawed through any scene in which Galifianakis opened his mouth, regardless of subject or tone, which made the effect even better.

[Spun Lepton]

Lots of homages to Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but isn't quite as funny. Downy Jr. is dead-on with his part, but I have to admit I'm getting a little tired of Galifinakis. It's also about 30 minutes too long.

[Henry Gale]

It seems cursed by the fact that it was made coming right off of the success of The Hangover and involved so many of the people again, because it really seems like a script with much darker and more melancholic undertones to it, but seems like the final film felt a need to reflect the much broader, sillier humour of the gigantic comedy that came before it. It feels like it's main comedic setpieces are too loosely sketched and misguided in exactly how big they feel they should go, and I don't know if that means it needed another draft or if the separated writing credit to Phillips and Adam Sztykiel is what added the comedy that disjoints it. And as much as I like Galifianakis and though he's the given the funniest stuff to do here, it seems like he's almost miscast for the same reasons the humour doesn't ever seem to work with the plot mechanics around it.

It's the typical case of wondering if the actors had taken each other's roles if the movie would have been more of a success because of them drastically playing against type. To me, Pinapple Express is a perfect (and seemingly rare) example of following through with that idea, and it remains one of my absolute favourite comedies of recent years. The Hangover, though it seems to strive to be a much less substantial movie Due Date, is constructed more intelligently to simply allow the humour to flow through ti and deliver, and it's undoubtedly an extremely rewatchable and fun movie to sit through because of that. Due Date seems to want to offer much more, but in the end seems to fail because the allure of it being a comedy that's marketable in the same ways as the director's previous movie seems to really undermines any weight it hopes to have with its more human bits.

It made me laugh, especially in its first half, but once it seemed like it wasn't completely interested in just being a comedy, that's when I realized it didn't have every aspect of it functioning as well as it probably thought or hoped it did.

**1/2