Rating: 2.5 Pulses
John Cho, Kal Penn, Rob Corddry, Neil Patrick Harris
Directed by Jon Hurwitz and
Hayden Schlossberg
Rated R
My moviegoing friends, I have but three words: Neil Patrick Harris. I’ll admit, the chance of seeing him as a doped-up, heterosexual, womanizing version of himself again got me excited about Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, sequel to 2004’s Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.
Not that I’m above a little good stoner humor, but the film picks up immediately where White Castle left off. The timeline feels awkward, but not as awkward as the half-assed attempt at a back story. “Bong” sounds a lot like “bomb” and Kumar’s (Penn) bong looks a lot like an explosive, landing the duo in hot water with mentally deficient Ron Fox (Corddry), and then in a steamy little cell in Guantanamo Bay.
Then there is escape, pant-less women and men, inbreeding rednecks, the KKK, hookers and smoking the good stuff with the president, who can’t believe our beige heroes were ever mistaken for “terrorizers.”
I consider Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle a film about the manifestation of the American dream, the children of immigrants exercising their rights to smoke pot and eat little burgers. While the new film goes to great lengths to mock racial profiling (although the gag gets old), the administration and its disregard for due process, it doesn’t give me that thrill. The gratuitous nudity and pot humor are on target and the film is funny in a crude way, but pointless. It makes you wonder what Danny Leiner, who directed the first film, did to temper that movie.
Still, you can’t beat Neil Patrick Harris tripping ’shrooms and riding a white unicorn, you just can’t. I came out of the theater smelling faintly of marijuana and wanting NPH branded on my ass. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
