Just say no, bro

AT THE MOVIES
Due Date
DIRECTED BY: Todd Phillips
STARRING: Robert Downey Jnr, Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan
CERT: 15A

Due Date is director Todd Phillips’ follow-up to The Hangover, a very funny film at times, though its brashness and sharp edge were badly blunted by a wimpy ending, the kind of emasculated nonsense made popular in recent times by Judd Apatow and his disciples.

Due Date suffers a similar but more drastic fate. There’s a woman involved and a baby. A big family responsibility to be met. Yet ultimately you never get the feeling that this turns the character in question into a eunuch, a simpering wuss promising never to be a bold boy again.
Just when you think there is hope for manliness, the poor chap falls victim to a different tactic. Turns out Peter (Downey Jr) has anger issues that he’s working on. So his occasionally severe reactions to unfolding events are not simply those of a strong, decent man who’s tired of having his head wrecked.
No, there has to be something wrong with him. The beast will only be soothed by love and the understanding ear of a brother more in tune with his feelings.
No need for the ladies to cut the boys down to size, then, since they’re already castrating each other. It’s genius! Fortunately, if not miraculously, Due Date is good enough and funny enough that you can almost ignore this devious carry on.
Peter Highman is an architect, a handsome, well-kept, successful man in a hurry to get home to his wife (Michelle Monaghan) in LA for the arrival of their first baby. In Atlanta airport, Peter encounters Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis), a bearded man-child who seems to naturally attract chaos.
The pair hit it off on two wrong feet, get themselves thrown off the plane and landed on the no-fly list. In the confusion, Peter’s carry-on bag gets lost, his wallet along with it. Without money or ID, he’s stranded ­ with not much choice but to accept a lift in Ethan’s rental car. Ethan is going to Hollywood to be an actor and Peter is more than welcome to share the journey with him and his beloved bulldog.
The cross-country road trip includes a stop at Ethan’s ‘pharmacy’, where Juliette Lewis sells herbal goods and Peter teaches an irritating child the kind of lesson we all wish we could. There’s a painful pit stop at Western Union and a visit to Peter’s friend Darryl (Jamie Foxx), who serves percolated remains of the dear departed. It also includes a detour to Mexico (I thought it said Texaco), and a disturbing overnight stay in the car that will live long in the memory.
Much of this is funny, some of it hilarious ­ but more of it has a dark, uncomfortable tone to it that doesn’t really sit well. In this respect, and in almost everything else about the movie, Phillips borrows heavily from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which would be no bad thing, except for two reasons.
Firstly, in paying such obvious homage, Phillips has allowed himself to be clearly dwarfed by the shadow of the great John Hughes ­ who weaved elements of death and loss into his beloved road movie, in a way that Phillips can’t. He tries the bathroom acting class, the Grand Canyon goodbye ­ but the emotional depth isn’t there.
Secondly, the obvious connection between the films has led one prominent film critic to refer to the Hughes classic as a bromance, a crime for which that individual should be taken out and skinned alive with a rusty spud peeler.
For the benefit of younger readers, I should point out that bromance is a recent notion, coined in the Apatow stable and repeated by lazy clowns for want of a handy label.
A film like Planes, Trains And Automobiles ­ any movie, indeed, featuring two or more men on an adventure, was never called a bromance. It was simply a comedy. Or, if the chaps involved were policemen, as in Lethal Weapon or 48 Hours, then it was a buddy cop movie. Nothing with Nick Nolte in it could ever be called a cissy thing like a bromance.
Take possibly the greatest funny buddy movie of them all ­ Butch and Sundance. Did they call that a bromance? I don’t think so. Did you ever see John Wayne or Lee Marvin in a bromance? How about Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson? Was The Great Escape a bromance? I think not. So, enough of this foolishness.
Tune in next week when… well, I won’t mention the word bromance.