A Due Date to miss...

No, I haven't seen this film...and, frankly, I don't care to. Much in the spirit of my spiel against I Love You, Beth Cooper, I'm just going to eviscerate what looks to be one of the worst films of the season, Due Date.

What happened here? Unlike Blech Cooper, there was actually some promise behind this one: a fine cast, a director of significant talent. So, what went wrong? The first joke of the first trailer said it all: Peter (Robert Downey, Jr.) tells of how his father abandoned him when he was a boy. It's a touching moment that hints at the film's obvious-yet-admirable aspirations to be this generation's Planes, Trains and Automobiles...then we are treated to wheezing laughter from Peter's traveling companion, Ethan (Zach Galifianakis), who responds with the now-classic line, "Oh, man. My dad would never do that. He loved me." Wow. Talk about sucking the air out of the room.

The trailer only gets worse from there. What it essentially boils down to is a road-trip movie chock-full of forced, madcap wackiness, mainly at the hands of Galifianakis, who, here, is less the off-kilter manchild of The Hangover and more...Peter Griffin with a beard; a possibly sociopathic, possibly retarded (though the guy seems to be drawn so slimly, who the fuck can tell?) character living in his own little world, immune to the destruction and discomfort he causes to others*. There's a surplus of pissholes like this in the real world that I can see for free, so why would I pluck down hard-earned to see one?!

I appreciate Robert Downey Jr. wanting to do a comedy in-between his franchise films, but surely there were better scripts on the pile than this one. And Zach Galifianakis...just to get it out of the way, I'm not one of those Ain't-It-Cool-News boors who hates/is sick of the guy. I think he's hilarious. His Comedy Central stand-up special. His star-making turn in The Hangover. Hell, even his bits in Bubble Boy and (especially) Out Cold. He can be funny, something I haven't seen in a single clip of this movie.

(If I am to understand what I've heard correctly - and why would people on the internet lie? - it was suggested that Galifianakis was the main person responsible for ousting Mel Gibson from a cameo spot in the forthcoming The Hangover 2. As has been mentioned quite a bit, the guys had no problem letting Mike Tyson - a convicted rapist - appear in the first movie, and word is, he's cameoing in the sequel. It does seem a little hypocritical...until one remembers that rape victims don't run Hollywood. Tell me I'm wrong.)

Jamie Foxx is in this too, playing an old friend of Peter's (and a part of the one thing about the trailer I found funny - the drainage ditch scene). His involvement in this film actually has me looking forward to that project where he'd play Wanda (from "In Living Color") to Martin Lawrence's Shenehneh (from "Martin"). After all, there's nowhere to go but up. Also, according to Den of Geek, he only seems to be around to set up a sight gag at the film's end. For this plot wrinkle, why am I reminded of Naked Gun 33 1/3?

Speaking of wasting talent, Michelle Monaghan is on hand as Peter's wife. Apparently (re: the aforementioned Den of Geek review), she has nothing to do here and only shares a brief scene with Downey. As a fan of 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, this will not stand. The prospect of seeing Downey and Monaghan together again on screen ought to fill me with elation, not contempt, but that's just what happened here.

In fact, I get the sense that this film will outdo KKBB's total gross in one weekend ($4.2 million, BTB). In the (unfortunately likely) event that this happens, let me just say something to those people who see and enjoy this dreck: You tasteless cunts do not deserve a movie like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

And to continue with the "Suck my cock, Due Date!" motif of this post, I will be watching a double feature of Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Tommy Boy this weekend, showing that there can be a right way to executing this premise.

* - And I really didn't care for the reenactment of the 'Neal blows up at Del' scene on that one "Family Guy" with Peter as Del; even in the 'it's just a reference' context of the scene, I found that truly offensive. This isn't quite off-topic as one would think.