Robert Downey, Jr. schedules 'Due Date'

By Sarah Sluis

Robert Downey, Jr. will join Zach Galifianakis in Due Date, the next film Todd Phillips will direct. The Hangover, which starred Galifianakis and was directed by Phillips, outperformed two summer comedies with big-name comedy stars (Land of the Lost and Year One), and usurped Beverly Hills Cop to become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time. Phillips has already signed on to direct a second installment of The Hangover, but plans to squeeze in Due Date first. The deadline comedy will center on an uptight husband (Downey, Jr.) who must rely on a dopey slacker (Galifianakis) to drive him to his wife, who is either in labor or at the very end of her pregnancy. Phillips called it "a buddy comedy without the buddies." Within the one-sentence summary of the movie, I see elements of both a road trip comedy and a race-against-time comedy. I find the latter to be much more difficult to pull off, since there's only so much frantic yelling and scrambling audiences can take before they check out. However, The Hangover handled its deadline (finding the groom before the wedding) with a mix of freaked-out and laid-back characters, and by making the race to the altar a flashback (though not one that gave everything away).

Due Date will begin production this September in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and New Mexico. Phillips will also be a producer on the project. On The Hangover, he gave back his salary and in turn was rewarded with over $35 million, a stunning sum for an individual. He also got Warner Bros. to greenlight the sequel two months before it released, signaling not only the strength of the film but also the finesse of his agent and lawyers.

Creating one good comedy after another is difficult. Just as soon as comedians develop a signature style, it can quickly go sour (e.g., Bruno). To expand his comedic empire, it appears that Phillips is attempting to cultivate a stable of writers (e.g., Scot Armstrong) and stars (e.g., Galifianakis), using a strategy that has received particular attention lately because of Judd Apatow and his string of comedic hits. For those interested in the movie/comedy business, Funny People, which I saw yesterday, offers a thinly disguised critique of comedy stars and the process as a whole, including a thinly disguised poke at star Adam Sandler's career. In the movie, he's the star of high-concept comedies like Merman (He turns into a merman!) and Re-Do (He's a man in a baby's body!). While the movie as a whole, and its insidery feel, is a mixed bag, I never tired of seeing how Apatow used the silly films Sandler's character starred in as part of the plot. Phillips, however, has mined a different source of humor, that fraternalistic bonding we now dub "bromance." Both Old School and Road Trip are tales of male bonding, and Phillips' first film was in fact a documentary about fraternity hazing called Frat House. Who would have thought that the documentarian would turn to scripted stories about his subject? But it makes sense. As a director, Phillips is careful to find and incorporate his actors' improv performances, a sensibility that I attribute to the observational mindset of a documentarian. It will be hard to top the #1 spot currently occupied by The Hangover, but I'll be marking my calendar for Due Date.