The Gitmo Redemption

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay will probably be the most scatological comedy you'll see all year, which is no mean feat these days, but it shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with its predecessor, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

The earlier movie followed two stoners, one a Korean-American banker (John Cho) and the other a slacker of Indian descent (Kal Penn), on a raunchy, unpredictable odyssey across New Jersey in search of a White Castle. Over the course of one long night, they ran into backwoods freaks, racist cops, a cheetah, scornful jocks, and Neil Patrick Harris, as their burger-lust propelled them from Hoboken to New Brunswick to Princeton to Cherry Hill. A relatively low-budget production, it became a hit among young people and, as far as I know, just about everyone from the Garden State, where, at the showing I attended, a shot of a Turnpike sign displaying the name of my hometown provoked cheers of the kind that you usually hear at football games. It was probably the funniest movie of 2004.

The sequel picks up right where White Castle left off. Having just returned home from the previous night's adventure, they've decided to set off for Amsterdam in pursuit of Harold's crush, Maria. Kumar, however, is mistaken for a terrorist on the plane, and, before they know it, an overeager government agent (Rob Corddry) has sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Luckily, as the title suggests, they escape. From Cuba, they hitch a ride back to the States on a raft with some illegal immigrants, borrow a car from a friend in Miami, and embark upon a journey to Texas, where an acquaintance, Colton, whose father's political connections may be able to free our lovable duo from their predicament, is about to marry Kumar's ex-girlfriend, Vanessa.

It's a fun ride, and the movie has plenty of laughs, but, as you might expect, it isn't as fresh as the original was. In many ways, Guantanamo Bay is a retread of White Castle. The racist cop has become the racist Homeland Security undersecretary, and the boys even meet an inbreeding couple who live in a cabin in the Alabama wilderness: It's a little too reminiscent of their earlier encounter with the disfigured, reclusive redneck, and it plays out almost exactly as we expect it will, though, in place of boil-ridden Freakshow, Harold and Kumar come face-to-face with purring Pan's Labyrinth-esque cyclops that is one of the movie's more memorable creations. Fortunately, some of the movie's recurring jokes are just as funny as the second time around: Neil Patrick Harris, for instance, is as glorious here as he was in his previous appearance. The real-life NPH's coming out of the closet hasn't affected the movie's version of him, who still loves drugs and hookers. "I'm going to rock out with my cock out, and you're going to jam out with your clam out. It's going to be magical," he assures one prostitute.

It does not help, however, that by now we've become accustomed to the series's cheerful subversion of some ethnic and social stereotypes and ironical endorsement of others. In the first movie, which seemed at first a straightforward stoner comedy, its satirical impulse was a terrific surprise; in the sequel, we expect it when the gang of fearsome black men approaching Harold and Kumar's broken-down car really just wants to help. An extra element of political satire is added this time around, but it's dangerous territory. At times, the movie comes close to slipping into that genre of tendentious farce that South Park, at its most infuriating, occupies, its lighthearted silliness mixing with very serious stupidity, creating a maddeningly sanctimonious effect. But Guantanamo Bay's attacks upon the American government are so purely zany that they don't really provoke anyone. If anybody will be offended by the contents of this movie, rather than just its title, it will be a result of the picture's love affair with bodily fluids and excrement. Within the first few minutes, we hear a bowel movement and look at semen; later, a Klansman urinates on our heroes, and a deer's bloody innards splatter onto Harold. Farts, also, are generously interspersed throughout the goings-on. Even I found it excessive.

Yet the major problem with this movie, if there can be said to be one, is one of pacing. The first picture began in a fairly realistic mode and then gradually increased in goofiness, drawing us by gradual degrees into the movie's wholly implausible world. This one begins at a fever pitch of wackiness, and it never relents. It might, in fact, be best viewed on a double-bill with its predecessor, functioning not as a separate movie but as a continuation of the first, in terms of both story and temperament, as Harold and Kumar journey deeper into ludicrousness.

But, despite everything, you'll have a good time if you purchase a ticket for Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The affable leads, Cho and Penn, have excellent chemistry, and there is something in their dialogue and their dynamic that, to males between the ages of fourteen and forty, is more familiar than anything else we've seen in buddy comedies. Straddling the line between geeky overachievement and jolly pranksterism, Harold and Kumar are smart but don't take themselves very seriously, and they're easy to relate to for people of all sorts of attitudes and backgrounds. The writers, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, who make their directorial debuts here, are also wonderfully tuned in to the speech patterns of a certain breed of white, college-educated, self-satisfied playboys and outdoorsmen known colloquially as douchebags -- in the first movie, Harold's coworkers and the extreme sports maniacs; in the sequel, the preppie Colton.

Toward these characters, Harold and Kumar Go to Guantanamo Bay is contemptuous, but, overall, its vision of the bizarre America that its characters travel is more hopeful and affectionate than it is derisive. You don't even need to get high to enjoy it.

Comments

[Tony Yates]

Sitting next to Abe at the theatre, the appearance of throwback emo-Harold was awesome.

[Tony Yates]

Also, I'm always impressed when something that made it into the trailer still made me laugh hysterically in the theatre---Kumar in terrorist garb doing the plane going down gesture is endlessly funny.