Due Date, if you comb the annals of the Internet, has not received the positive reviews most were expecting.
Riding high on the success of director Todd Phillp’s previous movie The Hangover, including the recent induction of the highly praised actor Zach Galifianakis, who stars in both these movies, the hype around Due Date being another hit was inevitable.
The Hangover, based around the misdemeanours of yet another bachelor party in Las Vegas, is of course a reference to Hunter S Thompson’s classic book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That slim volume deemed as the undisputed primer for men escaping the drudgery of life with the aid of drugs, hookers and the A – Z of behaving badly.
Sadly, The Hangover is like what Vegas has become: a bland shopping mall of systematic gambling portals and a direct reflection of the equally bland tourist-pilgrims who frequent there.
Due Date, on the other hand, is not bland at all. Yet it has none of the glamorous bells and whistles of The Hangover, even if it does possess similar themes of men removed from the familiar in order to have those life changing experiences.
Due date is a road movie and a basic two hander. The casting of Robert Downey Jnr as the stick in the mud in this Odd Couple equation is refreshing as it is clever.
Namely because it proves, once again, Downey’s talent doesn’t have to exist within the type casting boundaries of being a charming, footloose bastard.
It is Galifianakis who takes on those characteristics, without being a bastard, and does it with a unique skill he’s so deservedly being recognised for.
The closing advice is do go see this movie and enjoy it for its sophistication of humour, compared to the cliched buffoonery of The Hangover.
And that, really, those reviewers who slammed Due Date need to go on their own life changing holiday, to remind themselves and the general public that not every Hollywood movie is tailor made for the imagination of a 12 year-old.