My family and I went to see the movie Due Date this evening. Sitting in the theater, laughing ourselves silly, I leaned over to our one daughter and said, “I don’t think I could adequately summarize what this movie’s about to someone.” In between laughing, she nodded her agreement.
When I came home, I was interested in what others had to say about the movie, so I looked up several reviews. (Long ago, I learned to never seek reviews prior to seeing the movie, much preferring to come to my own conclusions, not go in tainted with some staunchy critic’s concept of the film.) Reading the reviews, I was surprised to see several declare that the movie was a flop.
A flop? If it was a flop, then why do my sides still hurt from laughing so hard?
Reading through those reviews, I realized what had happened. The critiques had missed the entire point of the movie. It wasn’t meant to be an intellectual film or alter world perception. No, what Due Date set out to do was to create a product that would provide viewers with a senseless mish-mash of random happenings that would have them laughing a good portion of the film. In my opinion, it did just that. And based on the laughter filling the theater, others thought so as well.
Did I feel as though I got my money’s worth? Absolutely! Was the movie a myriad of disconnected happenings, recklessly tossed together in the hopes of generating a few laughs? Yes. At times, did I find myself wondering if the screenplay concept had been the result of some drug-induced experience? Oh, yeah—several times! Did that lessen my enjoyment of the implausible not to mention often-impossible situations that played out on the big screen? No. Ironically, much like watching Disney’s Fantasia, I found myself further intrigued, not wanting to look away for fear of missing some gem of awkwardness playing out.
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