İNew Line
Cinema
John Cho and Kal Penn
in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo
Bay.
by John P.
McCarthy, Gazette
Movie Critic
Harold and
Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
Directed by: Jon Hurwitz & Hayden
Schlossberg
Running Time: 102 minutes
Principal Actors:
John Cho — Harold Lee
Kal Penn — Kumar Patel
Rob Corddry — Ron Fox
Rated: R
Grade: ** (out of 5)
Back in the summer of 2004, a
raunchy road comedy called Harold & Kumar Go to
White Castle hit multiplexes. I found the
selectively crude escapades of two pals with the
munchies hilarious and socially relevant —
elevated by an enlightened satirical premise
summed-up as “Revenge of the Minority Stoners.”
We were due for a good reefer flick. and sending
these particular potheads —Americans of Asian
and Indian extraction sick of being stereotyped
as brainy nerds — on an all-night trip across
New Jersey in search of burgers was a sight for
bloodshot eyes.
Sad to say, the sequel is a comparative bust. If
the relative potency of the two films were
graded like cannabis, White Castle would be Maui
waui and Guantanamo Bay would be ditch weed.
Rendition to Gitmo, the shorthand for America’s
prison facility in Cuba, is an appropriate
punishment for moviegoers who would guffaw at
some of the cruder scatological gags and harsher
sexual references. (Soon, the target audience
will consider the shots of male and female
genitalia mandatory.) The line between
vulgar-funny and just plain vulgar is crossed
too often. Kumar passionately defends his right
to free speech and other civil liberties; the
movie deserves those same protections yet still
borders on the indefensible.
Just a few hours after their prior screen
adventures ended, Messieurs Lee (John Cho) and
Patel (Kal Penn) are heading to Amsterdam, the
marijuana capital of the world so Harold can woo
the woman of his dreams. At the airport, they
bump into Kumar’s ex-girlfriend, Vanessa, who
reveals she’s about to marry a WASP Bushie named
Colton. The discrimination Harold and Kumar are
subject to this time around derives from
post-9/11 security hysteria and jingoism
encouraged by the current presidential
administration. The progression from everyday
racial stereotyping to profiling terrorists in a
repressive political climate is logical enough,
but the spoofing of brainless federal law
enforcement is too extreme to be funny or
cutting. It’s proof that smoking pot will over
time (four years or even a couple of hours)
blunt your faculties.
After Kumar fires up a specially rigged,
smoke-free bong in the airplane lavatory,
they’re busted and sent (without trial) to
Guantanamo. Thanks to a gag involving a lewd sex
act and burly prison guards, it’s not long
before they’re back in the continental U.S.
Fugitives in orange jumpsuits, they visit a
buddy in Miami before taking a road trip to
Texas where Vanessa and Colton will soon tie the
knot. Colton is a personal friend of the
Commander-in-Chief and boasted he could get
Harold and Kumar out of any fix. Their new
nemesis — a painfully stupid, grossly unfunny
federal agent (Rob Corddry) — gives chase.
A highlight of the first movie was Harold and
Kumar’s encounter with a drug-addled Neal
Patrick Harris, the actor who portrayed one of
their TV heroes, the underage physician Doogie
Howser. Harris shows up and is still a scumbag,
but his behavior, particularly in the whorehouse
he insists on visiting, is more nasty than
humorous. The real high point (pun intended) of
Guantanamo Bay is when H&K party with George W.
Bush in Crawford, Texas. There’s something
admirably edgy, because vaguely seditious and
disrespectful, about simultaneously toasting and
roasting a sitting president with a druggie past
in a mainstream movie. And while it certainly
undercuts the movie’s aspirations toward deep
satire, it — along with the scene in which
Vanessa and Kumar have a threesome with a giant
bag of pot — comes closest to capturing the
White Castle vibe.
The sequel’s failure to live-up to its
predecessor would be more understandable if it
had been made a year or two later. Part of the
problem is relative: due to Judd Apatow and
other filmmakers, moviegoers have become
accustomed to significantly more raunchiness in
the last four years, not that it’s fair to blame
macro trends for this blunt and artless comedy.
Responsibility rests with Jon Hurwitz and Hayden
Schlossberg, the Garden State boys who wrote
both movies and have taken on directing duties
here as well.
For a complete listing of current movies
playing in the Hammonton area, click on
“Entertainment” and “Local Movie Listings.”
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