Well you can call me "motherfucker" for long. I'm back. With yet another review of a movie I saw weeks ago. In my defense, I did spring for one of them spankin' new HD tele-visions so I've been transfixed by shiny sparkly items and unable to content myself with slaving away at the interwebs. Anyway, enough excuses out of me - let's review this bad boy already. Todd Phillips is one of the princes of American comedy - a godfather of sorts of the "Fratpack" group of flicks, in which grown men act like infantile imbeciles.. and hilarious ones at that. Road Trip, Old School, Starsky and Hutch, School for Scoundrels, and The Hangover are all Todd Phillips joints. This one is the follow-up to possibly the biggest comedic hit of all time, Summer '09's smash hit The Hangover - widely beloved, and largely for the outrageous performance of Zach Galifianakis, perhaps the most infantile of all. Phillips famously cameos as creeps in his movies, whether it's as the creepy bus passenger with a foot fetish in Road Trip, a gangbang participant in Old School, the guy going down on his girlfriend in an elevator in The Hangover, or the robe wearing boyfriend of Ethan Trembley's pot dealer in this one. So you get the vein of what this one is going for from the get-go. So other than being the Galifianakis/Phillips reunion, this one adds one of the truly great actors of our time, who proved he had epic comedic chops in his own right in "Tropic Thunder", namely Tony Stark himself, Robert Downey, Jr.
This is basically "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" in 2010, and is a very funny movie in its own right, I laughed quite a bit, although it is far from perfect. RDJ is a smarmy, upper class asshole architect by the name of Peter Highman who needs to get from Atlanta to LA for the birth of his first child. A chance encounter at the airport with a simpleton, would be actor/Two and a Half Men devotee Evan Tremblay derails a direct first class flight and results in Peter hitching a ride to LA with Evan (and his outrageous dog, Sonny) in Evan's rental car. Don't get me wrong, this story has been told before, but Phillips and Co. bring enough twists and the actors are talented and funny enough to keep you thoroughly entertained. Aside from brief appearances from a very funny Danny McBride and Jamie Foxx, this is basically a two-man show, and unlikely partners Peter and Ethan find their way into hijinks as they meander from Atlanta to LA by car.
There are some ridiculously funny scenes - I won't spoil them for you here, but I laughed a lot. It's just slightly... off. Especially compared to Phillips' hits like Old School and The Hangover. Tremblay and Highman's inevitable bonding seems unrealistic and ill-timed, and a particularly ridiculous scene in Mexico sort of ruined any pretense of reality. Galifianakis and Downey Jr. have great chemistry and are both very, very funny. This is a movie definitely worth watching, although it is in no way a classic.
Enjoyable, solid, funny. Galifianakis is the most dynamic force in comedy today.
6.5/10.
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