Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan
Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes

“Due Date” places the slow burn technique of Robert Downey Jr. against the upfront idiocy of Zach Galifianakis in “The Hangover” director’s version of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” Despite being an unashamed reworking of the latter two-hander, it’s actually quite funny and entertaining, although sentimentality almost inevitably creeps in later.

Peter, a harrassed businessman (Downey) dashes to Atlanta Airport so he can be home in time for his wife (Michelle Monaghan) to give birth. Her “Due Date” is Friday. But Peter runs into Ethan (Galifianakis), a shambling bear of a man, travelling with a small dog named Sonny. From the moment they encounter one another, it’s set up for one hassle after another.

On the plane Ethan creates a scenario which results in his new buddy-to-be having been shot by an Air Marshal (“Relax. It’s just a rubber bullet.”) kicked off the plane and put on the international “No Fly” list. Peter’s wallet is in transit and he is trapped in a clapped-out car dithering across the country with a chatty balloon who smokes dope and who is heading to Peter’s home city of Los Angeles, because he thinks he can be an actor. On TV’s “Two and a Half Men,” no less.

This odd couple endure crashes, border crossings, a visit to a hash dealer (Juliette Lewis steals her scene) and an irate Iraq war veteran Western Union clerk (Danny McBride).  Dealing with the man-child Ethan should easily convince the hot-tempered Peter that he’s not ready yet for fatherhood, and dealing with blunt, sarcastic and menacing Peter should convince Ethan he’s not ready for Hollywood. The best either man can promise about his shortcomings is “I’m working on it.”

The film benefits from what one can only assume is a lot of improvising by the cast — one-liners topping other one-liners. Bit players Lewis and Jamie Foxx pitch in. Downey comes up with “I despise who you are at a cellular level.” He quotes Ice Cube — the rapper, not the naff bland family film actor he became– “You’d better check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

Todd Phillips’ film takes a couple of the aforementioned sentimental detours, and not every scene succeeds, but it’s a streamlined feature, with two very funny actors carrying the load reasonably well.

Cast: Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson, Kunal Sharma, Eddie Hassell, Zosia Mamet, Yaya DaCosta

Director: Lisa Cholodenko

Running time: 104 minutes

The Kids Are All Right is a drama that doesn't manipulate, it is a film full of ideas, but manages to avoid falling into the easy trap of preaching.

Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) are a middle-aged lesbian couple in Los Angeles with two teenage children, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Nic, a hospital doctor, is the breadwinner of this stable, well-off family, while the unfocussed Jules has vague plans to start a landscaping business funded by her more financially sound other half. As the film opens, Joni, under pressure from her younger brother and behind their mothers’ backs, calls up the sperm-bank that provided their mothers with genetic material eighteen years earlier. 

Through this, the siblings manage make contact with their hitherto unknown biological dad, Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a hedonistic restaurateur who's flattered by the attention but quite unsure how to proceed. (I’ve no idea how this works in America, but it seems ridiculously and ludicrously easy for her to trace her anonymous father from a mere mobile phone call). Gradually, Paul is incorporated into the fringes of the family: The children bring him home for an excruciatingly awkward lunch, and against Nic's wishes, Jules takes on the job of landscaping his garden.

It's fitting that gardening—Jules' landscaping project, Paul's achingly trendy farm-to-table restaurant—plays such a large role in The Kids Are All Right, because the film itself is at heart about the ecosystem of a family, and the way that system changes when an exotic species is introduced. The presence of Paul completely changes the whole dynamic, exposing flaws and weaknesses in Nic and Jules' relationship and forcing the children to defy their mothers and reassess their peer friendships. (A subplot in which the introverted Laser finally stands up to his moronic pal is particularly well-handled.)

Without ever making the comparison outright, Cholodenko and her co-writer Stuart Blumberg draw a parallel between the aspiration for organic purity and the myth of the perfect family. However meticulously you cultivate your garden, they suggest, there's no predicting what might crop up by surprise or how it will grow.

The Kids Are All Right’s story hinges entirely on how the characters treat one other. The acting here is really interacting, and this ensemble cast just about manages to get it right. Bening makes Nic a force to be reckoned with: an acid-tongued workaholic who loves her wine more than she should but who's such lively company you can understand what Jules sees in her. A scene in which Nic sings Joni Mitchell's "All I Want" acappella at a dinner party veers from cringing embarrassment to heroics and then straight back to 'total pure beamer' territory.

The constantly brilliant Julianne Moore finds lots of layers in Jules: passive-aggression, vulnerability, vanity and sexual hunger. Ruffalo gives a well-played laidback turn as an immature but well-meaning sexy rascal. And as the kids who aren't always, but eventually will be, apparently, all right, Wasikowska and Hutcherson are tentative and tender and convincingly sibling-like. More than anything, this is a film about marriage. Not about gay marriage in particular, though the portrait of this couple's decades-long bond underscores the absurdity of the debate about what to call same-sex unions. Cholodenko, who has a donor child with her partner, isn't making a commercial for alternative families—in fact, some gay cinemagoers may bristle at the film’s less-than-orthodox take on lesbian sexuality and the complications of donor parenthood. What Cholodenko has aimed for, and achieved, is something bigger: a serious and funny film about the simple yet incomprehensibly fraught act of moving through time into middle age with the person you love.