BEVERLY HILLS -- Having already covered college in Old School and marriage in The Hangover, it only makes sense that director Todd Phillips' latest film, Due Date, revolves around an impending bundle of joy.
"I sort of grow with my movies," Phillips, 39, says during a news conference for the new comedy, in theatres now.
"(My films) are always about my age range, it feels. And that's the next step in life, having a kid and fatherhood. It just seemed like an interesting thing, both for emotion and for comedy."
Mind you, Due Date isn't muddied with dirty diapers and blood-curdling infant screams. Instead it's a road trip comedy in which soon-to-be first-time dad Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) finds himself in Atlanta without a wallet and -- with his wife (Michelle Monaghan) set to give birth in L.A. in just a few days -- he's forced to ride home with airhead wannabe actor Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis) and Ethan's French bulldog Sonny.
Ethan quickly ignites Peter's already-short fuse, making pot pit-stops, crashing the vehicle and engaging in, um, interesting behaviour with Sonny.
It's the second road comedy Phillips has directed (2000's Road Trip is the first), and one of many (in addition to 2003's Old School, 2004's Starsky & Hutch, and last year's megahit The Hangover) that have seen him exploring male friendships, this time through the ticked-off eyes of Downey Jr.'s temperamental architect Peter.
"I think that every time I feel that I really hit critical mass and I'm in the right place is when I feel like the director and I become a third thing and that's the character," says Downey Jr., who calls himself "an appendage" of Phillips in Due Date.
"I always feel like I'm playing an aspect of the director, particularly when he's an auteur. And to me, it's a way of almost making him a proud parent."
But not without a few fights. Phillips says he and Downey Jr. had a lot of "spirited discussions", some lasting up to three hours, each morning during Due Date's filming.
"He is basically another writer in the room," Phillips says of the star. "He had the pages and then he'd go, 'OK, what are we REALLY doing?'
"Robert has an aversion to things that are typed," Phillips continues. "So even if we just rewrote the actual scene on a napkin, even if it was the same scene, he felt better about it.
"A lot of times you hear actors are worried about their lines. Robert thinks of the movie as a whole, he thinks of every character as a whole. For me it was an unequalled experience."
Downey Jr.'s comeback in the last few years has included blockbusters Iron Man and its sequel, as well as Sherlock Holmes and its upcoming sequel - though he'll go so far as to say that Phillips' Hangover followup is his "most healing project" yet.
Though it's not hard to believe, given all of the aggression Peter gets to let out on Ethan.
"There was something so cathartic about (this)," Downey Jr. says. "I've never come across anyone who is so confident and is so thoughtful and so spontaneous that it's not even daunting. He's just in a class by himself, and I think Todd is the best director I've worked with, bar none."
Downey Jr. adds, "We're generally pretty happy guys -- but we love just getting crabby together."
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