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.
