It's Raining Two and a Half Men

When you go to see a Todd Phillips movie, you have a pretty good idea what you're getting yourself into.  Anyone who's seen Road Trip, Old School, or The Hangover can probably see the similarities that run through all the director's films.  Booze and drugs, women, partying, and some far-off destination that the heroes of the film need to get to by tomorrow or else everything will fall apart!  The tone is always goofy and as over the top as things get, they never stray too far from fun territory. 

That's what makes his newest flick, Due Date, such a surprising experience.  It contains all the ingredients of his previous films (which, let's be honest, he's ripped off from the comedies of others from decades ago), but the tone of this film is considerably darker than his previous films.  As funny as the movie is, there is a subtle undercurrent of something more melancholy and substantial than anything we've seen in his wacky buddy comedies of the past 10 years.  The puzzling thing is that, although this heavier tone is clearly there, I can't quite put my finger on where it's coming from.

Part of it might be the fact that he's working with only two principal characters in this film, whereas in previous films he usually had a larger ensemble of at least three actors.  When you've got a group of actors on screen, like The Marx Brothers or The Three Stooges, it lends itself to broader, more situation-driven comedy.  But with only two characters, it's necessary to dig a little deeper.  Due Date depends on the interpersonal relationships of two seriously flawed characters with issues that they haven't got a clue how to deal with: Peter (Robert Downey, Jr.) is about to become a father, and Ethan (Zach Galifianakis) has just lost his.

I think it's this more introspective approach that made me enjoy Due Date more than Phillips' previous films.  I'm what feels like one of the few people who didn't drool all over The Hangover last year.  I enjoyed the film, but I certainly wasn't among the many of my friends who raved that it was the funniest film they'd ever seen.  The massive success it has endured baffles me to a certain extent.  I think The Hangover's biggest strength is that, unlike most broad comedies, it's not predictable.  It's still rigidly formulaic and doesn't take many risks, but the antics that the characters endure are nearly impossible to see coming, unlike comedies of the same commercial caliber over the past few years, like the incredibly overrated Wedding Crashers.

Although Due Date is more formulaic in terms of plot, it took me emotionally to places I didn't expect to go.  So often in comedies, the emotional heart of the movie is reduced to an insincere romantic sub-plot, usually so the creators have some excuse to justify all the dick jokes they've been making for the last ninety minutes.  This bothers me on a number of levels, one of which is that no one should need an excuse for any kind of joke; but mainly, insincere emotion in movies annoys the hell out of me.  The Hangover didn't even try to add any emotion, sincere or otherwise, but the pain the characters deal with in Due Date is sincere and very real; Ethan's delusional desire to become an actor, and inability to deal with the death of his father, and Peter's many character flaws, aren't there as excess baggage, but are honest depictions.  Phillips is interested in them and cares about them.

To a certain extent, I wanted the film to deal with this more than it did.  Peter, nor the film itself, ever seem to address the evident fact that he is not at all ready to be a father.  He is prone to intense outbursts of anger; at one point he physically harms a child simply because he doesn't have the patience to deal with the kid.  He doesn't even have the patience to live with Ethan's dog for a few days.

One thing I found particularly troubling was the frequent depiction of Robert Downey, Jr. using drugs.  No one else in the theatre seemed to react to this, but I surely can't be the only one that remembers that, before his recent comeback, Downey was most famous for his crippling drug problems.  I'm glad that things have turned around for him, since he is a fantastic actor and deserves the recognition he is now receiving.  But seeing him tossing handfuls of Vicodin into his mouth left an awful pit in my stomach.  Was the line, "I've never done drugs in my life," intended to be ironic?  I know a film should be able to view its character as separate from the performer, but I still found this troubling.  Maybe viewed ten years from now the film wouldn't have this same effect, but it wasn't that long ago that the most famous image of Downey was not in an iron suit but in an orange jump suit.

Another thing that bugged me was how the many scene-stealing actors in the supporting cast were so underused.  Juliette Lewis, Danny McBride, and RZA are great, but their appearances are basically reduced to cameos, and they could have been utilized so much more.  (The last time I saw RZA on film was in Funny People last year, where he wore a goofy deli worker's uniform.  Here he's in a security guards uniform.  What is it that's so funny about seeing the RZA in uniform?  The appeal is weirdly strong).

These flaws aside, the movie is still hilarious and clever.  Like I said earlier though, its greatest strength is in its emotional sincerity that is so often absent from Phillips' movies and other comedies like them.  It was a refreshing viewing and wasn't at all the Hangover retread I expected.  Even though this follows the particular plot formula of a buddy comedy, this movie has another layer to it that sets it apart from the others in the pack.