Photo by: robertdowneyjrproject.com

Throughout the past decade director Todd Phillips has created a name for himself by shaping the buddy comedy genre, starting in 2000 with the release of “Road Trip.” Followed by the films “Old School” (2003), “Starsky and Hutch” (2004), and “The Hangover” (2010), which led to Phillips’s latest comedic creation “Due Date.”

Phillips teams up with Zach Galifianakis (“The Hangover”, “It’s Kind of a Funny Story”) along with Hollywood A-lister Robert Downey Jr. (“Iron Man”, “Sherlock Holmes”). Downey plays future father Peter Highman who has been banned from being on an airplane because of an encounter with Galifianakis’s character, Ethan Tremblay. Peter has no other choice but to drive cross-country from Atlanta to Los Angeles with Tremblay whose dream is to appear on Two and a Half Men. Together they embark on a chaotic, hilarious, emotional quest following the basic structure of the buddy comedy genre.

However, “Due Date” is not just another buddy comedy. It is a buddy comedy with two actors that many would have never paired in a movie.

The chemistry that Downey and Galifianakis have onscreen creates the perfect equation and drives the entire film from start until finish. Downey’s serious subtle comedic dialogue is very clever and hilarious, while Galifianakis’s boisterous, goofy and childish personality gets in the audience’s face and brings the house down.

In the end, the film is about friendship and how friendship is found in the most unlikely of places and weirdest of circumstances. Downey and Galifianakis’s relationship clicks and connects with the audiences a lot more than other buddy comedy films and incorporates a deeper vibe concerning the back-stories of both Peter and Ethan allowing their characters to avoid being one-dimensional.