'Due Date' delivers crass comedy, kooky characters

Call it “Planes, Trains and Automobiles -- Without the Planes and Trains.”

“Due Date” stars Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis as two clashing, feuding strangers who share a small car during a road trip from Atlanta to Los Angeles.

One is an uptight architect with a flair for expensive clothes and a problem with his temper. The other is a wannabe actor with a bad perm and a knack for abysmal clothing combinations.

How these two personalities survive their road trip becomes the haphazard plot for “Due Date,” Todd Phillips' new raunchy laugh-fest designed to hold us over until he delivers the sequel to his smash 2009 raunchy laugh-fest “The Hangover.”

Unlike the uniformly unsavory characters in “The Hangover,” the characters in “Due Date” seem to be struck from the Judd Apatow mold: They're guys who make us care about them in between bouts of complete self-absorption and frequent gross-outs.

Downey plays Peter Highman, an architect whose extremely pregnant wife Sarah (a comically challenged and miscast Michelle Monaghan) plans on getting a C-section four days away.

Peter first sees wacky Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) at the Atlanta airport where Ethan's car shaves the door off Peter's rented limo.

Oddly enough, Phillips introduces Ethan in a long, lingering slow-motion shot, the sort usually reserved for the first time a guy meets the hot girl of his dreams.

Except Ethan looks like a hairy, bearded traveler who's escaped from “Grizzly Adams.”

In short order, Ethan's priggy personality and flair for saying and doing the wrong thing land them both on a “no fly” list. Next, poor Peter has lost his wallet, along with his ID, cash and credit cards.

Good thing Ethan has a car. He offers to get Peter to L.A. in time to be a dad. All Ethan has to do is find a good spot to drop the ashes of his recently cremated father, now housed in a coffee can.

“Why is he in a coffee can?” Peter asks.

“Because he's dead, Peter!” Ethan snaps.

That's a typical exchange in “Due Date,” a classic road comedy formula with more than its share of road bumps, such as Jamie Foxx's enthusiastic spit-take (where a character spews a drink after hearing something shocking or funny) and Galifianakis' painfully artless crash into a car door that falls off its hinges.

I would have enjoyed “Due Date” a lot more than I did had I been able to avoid the bombardment of its commercials and theatrical trailers that spoiled most of the movie's big money moments.

Good thing that “Due Date” has plenty of R-rated off-color jokes and nasty sight gags, such as Ethan's sexually self-abusive dog. Otherwise the Warner Bros. marketing department would have ruined all of the film's jokes.

Downey makes a thoroughly watchable ticking time bomb whose philosophy for disciplining children becomes the twisted high point of “Due Date.”

Galifianakis stands to be typecast as a clueless eccentric (see him in “It's Kind of a Funny Story” and “Dinner For Schmucks”), but then, he performs that role flawlessly.

Be on the lookout for cameos by Danny McBride as well as Foxx, plus a surprise appearance by an Oscar-nominated actress who's like a cherry on top of a slightly melted milkshake.

“Due Date”

<p>Rating: ★ ★ ★ </p>

<p>Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan, Jamie Foxx, Danny McBride</p>

<p>Directed by: Todd Phillips</p>

<p>Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated R for language, drug use, sexual situations. 100 minutes</p>