
In his new film Due Date, director Todd Phillips (Old School, The Hangover) stages a rather audacious cinematic experiment, placing two enormously talented actors, Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis, on a mostly deserted island, handing them an assortment of blunt and broken tools, and charging them with constructing a free-standing, fully-functioning Hollywood comedy.
To his credit, Phillips was at least considerate enough to supply his comic Crusoes with a detailed blueprint. An odd-couple/road trip movie hybrid, Due Date unapologetically mimics Planes, Trains and Automobiles, one of the John Hughes' rare “grown-up” comedies, in which Steve Martin starred as a straightlaced family man forced to travel cross-country...