Film

Due Date

Due Date straps Robert Downey Jr.'s near-feral, uptight expectant father to Zach Galifianakis's oblivious man-child for a cross-country ordeal involving drugs, fires, and a dog's scattered ashes. It's Todd Phillips at his most abrasive: fast, mean, occasionally very funny, and content to let its hero behave badly. For people who want comedy with teeth, not warmth.

TMDb rating6.4

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles1987

The template this film is quietly ripping off — Steve Martin's fastidious businessman and John Candy's disaster-prone shower-ring salesman, stranded together at Thanksgiving. Funnier, and it actually likes its characters by the end.

But It's gentler and slower than Due Date; if you want mania and menace throughout, the warmth here might feel soft.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles poster

Midnight Run1988

Robert De Niro's bounty hunter and Charles Grodin's accountant bicker their way across the country into grudging affection — sharper dialogue, tighter plotting, one of the great odd-couple road movies.

But It's a crime comedy with real stakes and a plot to track, not pure improvised chaos.

Midnight Run poster

Tommy Boy1995no page yet

Chris Farley and David Spade, a doomed sales trip, and a friendship built entirely on insults — dumber, sweeter, and less cynical than Due Date but cut from the same cloth.

But Farley's chaos is broader and more physical; some of the '90s comedy furniture has aged.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Sullivan's Travels1941

Same bones: a controlled, comfortable man is stripped of money and status and thrown into a chaotic journey with a stranger, forced to become someone looser and more human by the time he gets home.

A pampered Hollywood director sets out to experience real hardship and gets far more than he bargained for — the 1941 screwball original that invented 'privileged man forced onto the road learns something' as a genre.

But It's black-and-white, decades removed, and its swing into real desperation midway is more startling than anything in Due Date.

Sullivan's Travels poster
More like this (8)

Green Book2018

A buttoned-up passenger and an impulsive driver forced together on a long trip, except this one has an Oscar and something real to say about race in 1960s America.

But It trades laughs for sentiment fairly often, and its politics have been argued over since it won Best Picture.

Green Book poster

Rain Man1988

Tom Cruise's hustler discovers he has an autistic brother and drags him cross-country — the ancestor of every mismatched-road-trip comedy-drama, including this one's better instincts.

But It's a drama first, with only intermittent comic relief; don't expect Due Date's rhythm of gags.

Rain Man poster

The Guilt Trip2012no page yet

Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand, mother and son, driving across America bickering the whole way — a gentler, more sentimental spin on the exact same setup.

But It's softer and more predictable, aimed at a comfort-watch crowd rather than Due Date's abrasiveness.

Get Him to the Greek2010no page yet

Same year, same manic energy — a hapless assistant has days to get a self-destructive rock star across the country and onto a stage, chaos ensuing at every stop.

But It leans harder into rock-star excess and drug humour than family sentiment; the ending doesn't try as hard to be sweet.

Dumb and Dumber1994

If you want the trashier, dumber, more purely gag-driven end of the road-trip-with-an-idiot genre, this is the gold standard — relentlessly stupid and proud of it.

But There's no emotional throughline at all; it's jokes stacked on jokes, with nothing like Due Date's stab at heart.

Dumb and Dumber poster

We're the Millers2013no page yet

A fake family smuggling drugs across the border in an RV — a later, glossier, more polished odd-company road comedy from the same studio-comedy moment.

But It's slicker and safer, more concerned with likability than the messier, meaner comedy Due Date goes for.

Up2009

The same engine — a rigid, closed-off man forced by an unwanted companion into a journey he can't control, which ends up cracking him open — run through a totally different genre and audience.

Pixar's grieving widower gets an uninvited, chattering child stowaway on his cross-continental balloon journey — a family cartoon that sucker-punches you with grief before it lets you laugh again.

But It's a G-rated animated film; if you want Due Date's crudeness and adult chaos, this will feel like a completely different register.

Up poster

Nebraska2013

Same shape — two mismatched men, forced proximity, a pointless-seeming errand — played almost entirely straight, showing how much quieter and sadder this exact story can get.

Alexander Payne's black-and-white father-son road trip across the Midwest, quiet and funny and sad in roughly equal measure, as a son drives his stubborn father to claim a sweepstakes prize that probably doesn't exist.

But It's slow, deliberately unglamorous, and asks you to sit with awkward silences rather than punchlines.

Nebraska poster

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Pineapple Express, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, National Lampoon's Vacation, The Hangover, Idiots