HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY
Rating: *** (out of ****)
Cast: John Cho, Kal Penn, Rob Corddry, Neil Patrick Harris, Paula Garces, Roger Bart
Writers: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Director: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Opening in wide release on April 25th.

You won’t find a movie all year with a better title than Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. I actually laughed out loud the first time I heard it. The film is the sequel to the 2004 stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, in which a serious Asian student named Harold (John Cho) and his slacker Indian roommate Kumar (Kal Penn) get the munchies and embark on an all-night odyssey to find a White Castle hamburger outlet. The film was rude and uneven, but its occasional commentary on the place of minorities in America made it a modest cut above the usual stoner fare.

The reason that Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is such a great title is that it ups the ante. There’s a sly, silly anarchy to the title that promises a film fearless in its complete outrageousness – no subject is taboo, no scenario is too implausible. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay delivers on that promise: this movie is better than the original in every way. It’s funnier, more ambitious, and completely over the top.

The film picks up right after the events of White Castle, with Harold and Kumar returning from their burger binge and preparing to head to Amsterdam to find the girl Harold has fallen in love with. When Kumar sneaks a bong onto the plane, however, it gets mistaken for a bomb, and after being interrogated by an arrogant CIA agent (Rob Corddry), the pair winds up in Gitmo. Faced with the unfortunate possibility of having to perform sexual favours on the guards, Harold and Kumar escape and hitch a ride with some Cubans on a raft to America. Once there, they head to Texas to find Harold’s college friend (“an Abercrombie-wearing douchebag,” says Kumar) who has a personal relationship with George W. Bush in hopes of clearing their names. Unfortunately, the “douchebag” is marrying Kumar’s beloved former girlfriend.

John Cho and Kal Penn (who was recently put to good use in a rare dramatic role in The Namesake) are a really enjoyable comic team, and Neil Patrick Harris is back playing a whore-loving, drug-addicted version of himself - a character that won him an unlikely cult following after the first film. The biggest laughs, however, come from The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry, playing an obnoxiously racist CIA official. In one of the film’s best scenes, when interrogating two Jewish witnesses, he pulls out a small bag of coins and waves it in front of them. “That’s like, seven bucks,” says a witness.

Like the original film, the new Harold & Kumar is not a masterpiece of plot construction. It’s extremely episodic, and the majority of its comic set pieces could probably be removed without doing significant damage to the plot. The gags are hit and miss, but they hit more often than not. The original Harold & Kumar received some critical praise for the way it touched on issues of ethnic stereotyping, but the new film kicks the political satire up a notch. There’s a strong undercurrent of righteous anger underneath this film: it’s a reaction to an American government that the filmmakers perceive as not caring about different cultures and civil rights. It’s nice to see a commercially viable gross-out comedy that has some political consciousness, intelligence, and, most importantly, teeth.

Before you rush out to see Harold & Kumar, keep in mind that this film is not Jonathan Swift: most of the humour is pretty crude. But if you’re buying a ticket to see Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, odds are you’re expecting to see Harold and Kumar, not Wes Anderson or Woody Allen. Rest assured, this is a good Harold and Kumar movie. Part of the reason this movie is so much fun is because unlike so many other gross-out comedies, it knows that disgusting imagery is much less funny than the characters’ reactions to the disgusting imagery. There’s a lot of comedic skill on display here.