Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
dir. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg

You guys. You guys. You guys. Check it out. What if a black guy... had a job? What if rednecks... used the internet? What if the president... got hiiiiigh? What if a chick... wasn't wearing pants? What if masturbation... went wrong? What if two Jews... didn't dive on the floor when someone dropped a shiny nickel? What if an Asian person... spoke English? What if Kal Penn... had diarrhea? What if Rob Corddry... yelled a lot? What if Neil Patrick Harris... existed?

I, like many people, enjoyed 2004's Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. It was dopey and weird and fun. And so I had high hopes (well, let's be honest—medium hopes) about its sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. It seemed ballsy to get so politically topical in a movie about weed and farts. And irreverent social satire is sort of the thing these days. Also, I am generally a fan of jackassy jokes and, I don't know, all that stuff that dudes like (in fact, at Harold & Kumar 2, I weirded myself out by recognizing minor Howard Stern sidekick Richard Christy as a Klansman who pees on Kumar's head—thanks, brain!).

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay made me laugh a few times. Those times are entirely thanks to the comic charisma of Kal Penn and (especially) John Cho, and mostly consist of throwaway lines like "WHAT THE FUCK!?" and "FUCK YOU!" As for everything else—the written-down-on-a-piece-of-paper attempts at comedy—the smart jokes are too stupid and the gross jokes are too gross and the diarrhea is too loud and the forced blowjobs at Gitmo are just lazy.

You get the impression that writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hay Schlossberg have been gobbling a steady diet of Farrelly Brothers movies and Daily Show segments for the past decade or so. But you can't have it both ways. For every black-guys-love-grape-soda joke, ostensibly at the expense of the goofy racist fuck, there is a goofy racist fuck making a black-guys-love-grape-soda joke! The movie banks on hee-larious stereotypes as much (if not more) than it does on half-heartedly refuting them. But wait... what if... what if... marijuana... HAD A VAGINA? Well, I'll tell you. Kumar would have sex with it. The end. Your movie sucks.

lindy@thestranger.com