BEFORE: This is the 2nd of 3 "road trip" movies this week - this is not part of my around-the-world trip, which will mainly (I think) count each film's city as a stop on the trip, without counting travel seen within the film. A subtle semantic difference, I suppose.
And Jonah Hill from "Get Him to the Greek" links through "Superbad" to Danny McBride (last seen in "Your Highness") who has a small role tonight.
THE PLOT: Father-to-be Peter Highman is forced to hitch a ride with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay on a road trip in order to make it to his child's birth on time.
AFTER: Like last night's film, this one involves two people who are polar opposites, personality-wise, who are forced to travel together across the U.S., encountering obstacles that are physical, chemical and very personal. But where last night's film evoked "Midnight Run", this one is more like a descendant of "Planes, Trains & Automobiles". In that I mean that one character is the straight-laced family man, and the other is the more loud, obnoxious one who's clueless about how his personality may grate on others.
Having just traveled across the country myself, being delayed due to the bad weather hitting New York, and spending an extra three hours in the plane prior to takeoff, I can confirm that in such situations, how you click with the person sitting next to you makes all the difference. There's that terrible feeling of dread when you first sit down next to a stranger on a plane - what if that person doesn't want to talk? Worse yet, what if they DO want to talk, and they're super-annoying and say the word "technically" in every sentence? What if they don't like the fact that I had to raise their armrest, so I can fit in the seat? Or that I have to climb over them to use the restroom? Jeez, what if I'm the loud obnoxious one who's clueless about his personality grates on others?
You can see how this is an ongoing concern. But when you throw two disparate people together and force them to work toward a common goal, it's a bit like dropping Mentos into Diet Coke - you just sit back and wait for things to explode. Duck and cover.
This film features Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "The Avengers") and Zach Galifianakis (last seen in "Youth in Revolt") as the two leads, roughly corresponding to Steve Martin and John Candy, and the film ups the ante by giving them more desperate situations as the film goes on. A dispute at the airport gets them kicked off of a plane in Atlanta, and another series of contrivances lands them together in a rental car, driving across the South.
The clock is ticking, since the family man wants to make it to L.A. before the birth of his first child, and the other character is a wanna-be actor, who has an interview with an agent. So it would seem that their goals mesh, but the film keeps putting them at odds with each other, through various slip-ups and mix-ups. This is in Galifianakis' wheelhouse, essentially the same character he played in "The Hangover" - the person acting as a catalyst while the overall situation keeps getting worse and worse. Turns out this film is from the same director as "The Hangover", which makes sense.
In terms of tone, I was never sure who to be rooting for here - I mean, you want the characters to succeed, but it's funnier when they don't. Westward progress has to be made, but the film keeps throwing more and more obstacles in their path. The pair is constantly fighting and reconciling, because neither can progress without the other, not if they're going to drive in shifts and make it in time.
And because hyperbole is involved, you can sit there and say, "Oh, a character wouldn't be THAT clueless about how annoying he is." "Oh, that mistake is so stupid, how could anyone DO that?" Which cuts me off at the knees here, because I can't mention any Nitpick Points tonight without giving away the jokes. But the same character who seems to be a magnet for trouble also has annoying personal habits, likes to quote wrong trivia facts and verbal malaprops, and also has a number of shady chemical dependencies. It's a bit much to throw onto one characters.
There's a number of emotional touchstones as well - one character's impending birth of a child, and the other's recent family loss. I'm forced to question the addition midway through the film of an additional character, his presence seems like a forced way to move the characters forward when progress seemed impossible, plus it also introduces a weird element of doubt into the proceedings.
Overall, the film seems to not have a clear focus - it sets out to do one thing, but ends up doing another. I'm not sure if that was an intentional metaphor, running concurrently with the changes to their travel plans.
My personal connection to the film is that my boss is awaiting the birth of his first child, due in September. Fortunately the baby had the foresight to not be due during Comic-Con, or I might have been in a situation similar to the one seen in this film. I'm afraid to be the obnoxious traveling companion in this situation - sincee I see myself more as the Dr. Gonzo character from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". It's my job to make sure we've got enough grapefruit for the San Diego trip.
Also starring Michelle Monaghan (last seen in "Source Code"), Jamie Foxx (last seen in "The Kingdom"), with cameos from Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Mixed Nuts"), Matt Walsh (last seen in "Cyrus"), Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer.
RATING: 5 out of 10 rest stops
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