Due Date

Decent watch, probably won't watch again, and can't whole-heartedly recommend. This is an interesting movie to look at critically. The writing, mostly in the character work, feels weak. It actually has an interesting plot, for the most part: an idiot, through deceit, drags a jerk with him on a cross country road trip. It's a decent story, and I'd like to think of it as an spiritual predecessor to "The Hangover". The problem I have with it is that it feels like if there were better actors, then the characters would sell better. Then I remember it was Robert Downey Jr and Zach Galifinakas, and I'm not sure how much "better" you can get for these characters, meaning that they've probably already elevated the characters somewhat. It feels like a lot of the movie is unnecessary, like antithetical Chekov's guns. Either it's for a tiny one time joke with little payoff, or it's part of a lot of work for situational comedy. An example would be the dog, it really only has one significant joke in the entire movie (maybe 2), otherwise it's just a lot of maintenance. The coffee can on the other hand is repetitively used to throughout the movie as it's part of the character themes. I'm not saying it's not funny, if you like "Anger Management", then you might like this one, but I just think there are a lot better movies out there to watch.