CinePhillyist Reviews... Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is about as good as a stoner movie can get – and we mean that in an enthusiastic way, not a disparaging one. It is sufficiently stupid on its surface, but has some surprisingly good, smart laughs in it. Plus, as much as it's about a couple stoners craving a meal, it's also about being in your early 20's and not really sure what to do with yourself (Stay in an entry-level job you hate, go to grad school, or just get high?), and about racial stereotypes. The racial component of ...White Castle is subtle but undeniable. (Granted, we think Tom Carson's writeup about the Harold & Kumar films in this month's GQ reads a little bit too much of a racial undertone into the "White Castle" part of the first film's title, but his point is interesting nonetheless.) And it has two characteristics that successful comedies must have, and which we think go hand-in-hand: it's endlessly quotable, and it's still funny after multiple viewings.

So it was with great anticipation that we went into Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. After all, ...White Castle turned a Friday evening fast food run into an epic adventure. So what could ...Escape from Guantanamo Bay do for the already-epic task of, well, escaping from Guantanamo Bay? As it turns out, not a whole lot. Or at least, not a whole lot that we haven't seen before. ...Guantanamo Bay more or less takes the jokes we got in ...White Caste and takes them to an unnecessary (and unfunny) extreme, and then throws in some jokes we didn't get in the first Harold & Kumar, but then takes those to an unnecessary extreme as well. The Asian party from ...White Castle becomes a "bottomless party" in ...Guantanamo Bay. Freakshow is reincarnated in the form of an Alabama hunter. And Neil Patrick Harris's appearance is given an encore. In the case of NPH especially, his part in ...Guantanamo Bay is amusing, but little more, because this time around, as soon as he appears, you know exactly what you're going to get. And that's really the problem with ...Guantanamo Bay as a whole. Throughout the movie, you pretty much know exactly what jokes you're going to get.

Of course, there were those surprise jokes in there. The problem was, the new jokes didn't really add anything, except for an unnecessary degree of gross factor. Don't get us wrong, gross can be very funny. But in ...Guantanamo Bay, it seems to be a cop-out because the filmmakers seemed to believe, rightly or wrongly, that their commentary about race relations and stereotypes could sustain the comedy for a full ninety minutes. Either that, or they knew they needed something to distract the audience from the fact that they were rehashing a lot of the same jokes.

Perhaps it's only fitting that a lot of the jokes are repackaged in this second installment of Harold & Kumar. The movie picks up only a couple hours after ...White Castle ends. Of course, those White Castle slyders sure hit Kumar (the ubiquitous Kal Penn) hard and fast, because he looks like he's put on a few pounds since they left that White Castle in Cherry Hill. (Of course, there is no White Castle in Cherry Hill. But we digress.) Also unfortunately, Kumar inexplicably has a long-lost love interest in ...Guantanamo Bay. (Fortunately, that love interest is played by the stunning Danneel Harris, who would have stolen the movie if she'd had any more screen time.) All in all, a lot of things about ...Guantanamo Bay didn't make sense, and not in a good way. And the things that did make sense, only did because we'd already seen them before, in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.

Is Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay funny? Sure. But is there any reason you have to run out to see it now, as opposed to waiting for it to hit HBO? Absolutely not.

Image via CanMag.