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Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
They should have called for pizza.

Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn, paula Garces, Siu Ta, Neil Patrick Harris, Anthony Anderson, David Krumholtz, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Christopher Meloni, Ethan Embry
Director: Danny Leiner
Screenwriters: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Reviewed by Chris Ching

The movie is hardly the yuk fest its preview would have you believe, but Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle does contain one true gem of a scene. Kumar the Indian half of this ethnic stoner duo comes across a HUGE bag of marijuana and dreams a fantasy montage where he and the bag of pot fall in love.

"Hey Guys! We gotta pick up Delpino!"

It's one of the funniest movie scenes of the past few years, and you don't even to need to be high to enjoy it.

The same however can't be said of the rest of the film. Simply put, the joke success ratio isn't high enough to sustain an entire movie. At matinee price, you wont feel robbed. But at a full $9.50 you'll feel like some poor schlub who just bought a bag of oregano.

Roommates Harold and Kumar are six months or so post college graduation. While Harold is slugging it out in the Office Space dimension, Kumar is bailing out on medical school interviews in his ongoing quest to shirk responsibility. The only thing the two have in common - except for continual harassment by a bunch of Mountain Dew guzzling, X-treme sports playing rednecks - is smoking their lungs away with copious amounts of sticky icky. In one of their pot hazes, the two travel to a nearby White Castle Hamburgers to placate their severe case of the munchies. Needless to say, wackiness ensues.

John Cho and Kal Penn make for a good on screen duo with their 21st century update of the classic uptight and slob archetype. Penn especially has great comic timing. There's numerous B-level celebrity cameos, but the best is from former Doogie Howser MD Neil Patrick Harris playing himself.

If you want originality look elsewhere since Harold and Kumar pinches wholesale from American Pie, The Trips Road and Euro, Not Another Teen Movie, Office Space and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. More unsettling is that for a movie that supposedly pokes fun at racists, Harold and Kumar is rather... well... racist. A group of Asian students are portrayed as hopelessly nerdy goofballs while an Indian Mini-Mart owner plays into every Apu "Thank you come again" stereotype in the book. The movie also has a bizarre, obsessively homophobic air about it. Most puzzling.

Harold and Kumar is a nice diversion if your nearby theatre doesn't have Napoleon Dynamite, but it fails to register as anything more than that. A classic of Le Cinema De Pot? No way.

Rating:

(2 1/2 out of 4 stars)

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