With their second film, Harold and Kumar enter into the pantheon of dude-movie teams like Bill and Ted and Wayne and Garth by following up a surprise hit debut with an overreaching sequel that occasionally loses sight of what made the original so much fun in the first place. Luckily Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay has enough solid stoner humor and goofy set pieces to make up for its periodic missteps and intermittently successful stabs at political satire.
Picking up right where the 2004 original left off, H&K2 finds the titular potheads back from their epic journey to White Castle and about to head for Amsterdam so Harold can track down his dream girl. The trip to the pot capital of the world barely gets off the ground, though, as Korean-American Harold (Cho) and Indian-American Kumar (Penn) are mistaken for terrorists and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay.
As the title implies, their stint in Gitmo doesn’t last very long, and soon the two are on a quest through the deep South to clear their names and disrupt the wedding of Kumar’s ex-girlfriend to a frat-boy tool. Along the way, there’s a lot of what made the first movie so entertaining: vulgar but clever humor; jokey deconstructions of racial stereotypes; copious female nudity; and a gonzo appearance by Neil Patrick Harris as a twisted version of himself. There’s also a very similar rift between the two friends (with Harold as the responsible one and Kumar as the one causing all the trouble) that is resolved in a familiar way, but character development is certainly not the top priority in a movie like this (although it does sneak in here and there).
The first Harold and Kumar adventure was notable for the way it broke down the idea of racial divisions, casting its minority protagonists as goofballs with the same interests and aims as stoners of any race. H&K2 puts the social commentary at the forefront, as the duo come face to face with inner-city African-Americans, surprisingly sophisticated rednecks and a full-blown KKK rally. Writer-directors Hurwitz and Schlossberg (who penned but didn’t direct the first installment) aren’t exactly subtle in making their case against government paranoia and repression, but they are funny most of the time, and the movie in its way is as pointed as an episode of The Daily Show or a Michael Moore documentary.
The best bits are less about racism and more about the loopy worldview of stoners; Kumar’s dream of love with a giant bag of weed returns, as does his penchant for lighting up at the most inappropriate times (like, say, during a transatlantic flight). The scenes of Harold and Kumar smoking pot with President Bush (played by a really ineffective impressionist) come off like a bad SNL skit, but Kumar’s heartfelt declaration of love (in the form of a poem about the square root of the number 3) that immediately follows is a much more satisfying wrap-up. The two finally do make it to Amsterdam just as their shtick starts to wear a little thin, and the movie leaves you smiling and giggling (with or without the aid of controlled substances), and already anticipating Harold and Kumar’s European Vacation.
Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
***
John Cho, Kal Penn, Rob Corddry
Directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg
Rated R