Travels with Harold

I guess we saw Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle before I started this blog, so here's my capsule review: Fuckin' hilarious.

So how did we like Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay? Even better.

The sequel starts the day after White Castle. Nerdy Korean Harold Lee (John Cho) and freaky Desi Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) are going to Amsterdam to find Maria, the love of Harold's life (who he has barely spoken to) and enjoy the marijuana that the city is famous for. However, when Kumar tries to smoke a bong on the airplane, it is mistaken for a bomb, and they wind up in Guantanamo Bay.

But before they got on the plane, they had met Vanessa, the love of Kumar's life, who was going to Texas to marry a Republican douchebag. So when they escape from Guantanamo, they head for Texas - Harold thinks they are going to get the douchebag to pull some strings and get them out of trouble, but Kumar plans to mess up the wedding.

From here, you get the usual Harold and Kumar roadtrip - they meet up with rednecks, Neal Patrick Harris, threatening black men, the usual. We also get to meet a few of their old college buddies - the douchebag, a Miami beach Persian who's hosting a bottomless party (topless is passe), Rosenberg and Goldstein, etc. I liked this part - we see H&K in their social milieu: Ivy League oddballs.

This movie is the traditional roadtrip movie, the mess-up-the-ex-girlfriend's-wedding movie, the stoner picaresque. But it's also a movie about feelings - about Kumar coming to grips with his feelings for Vanessa, and for his friend Harold. That makes this a little deeper movie, I think.

But don't worry, it's still not deep enough to get your 'nads wet. Vanessa is just barely a character, and Harold's love interest, Maria, is even less. Lack of attention to female characters is pretty much standard for this type of comedy (maybe even the point), but it often bugs me.

But the story is really about the boys. Kumar is brilliant but self-centered and irresponsible, maybe because he has daddy issues. Harold is uptight but sweet and sincere. His scene in the whorehouse, dishing the dirt on Kumar with the girls, is priceless: "You see, Sparkle, it's all about him. Sure, Candy, he's a good man, but he can't say, 'I'm sorry.'"

I don't want to spoil it by telling you what Kumar does at the whorehouse, or what Neal Patrick Harris does. For that matter, do they ever get to Amsterdam? Watch it yourself and find out.

Two warnings, though:

1. I don't know how many poop, pee-pee, pubie, etc gags you can take, but this movie has more than that. John Waters probably went, "Guys, too far!!"
2. I don't know how you feel about the war on terror, but jokes about indefinite detention w/o cause but w/ torture and the Dim Son spearheading it, but they play it pretty light. It's like they made Hogan's Heroes during the war. Dudes, too soon.