An Old Dog with Older Tricks

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay || IMDb

This Friday, Harold and Kumar have returned to the big screen. Unfortunately, where the first movie gave us original, comedic characters with an obsession with White Castle, this movie falls short. Instead of the characters being driven by themselves, by the craving, they are forced to be on the move. Plot controlling characters is always less interesting than the characters controlling themselves.

This time around our heroes get thrown into the Cuban prison Guantanamo Bay after Kumar can't resist smoking on an airplane and his bong is confused for a bomb. After some minor plot (can it even be called that?) developments, they escape and are on the run to Texas, where a dude marrying Kumar's ex-girlfriend can get their records cleared. The movie falls short because all this setup is is an excuse to put the protagonists in a series of uncomfortable instances that were almost all done better in the first movie.

The movie has two jokes. The first is the racism joke. This time we're not limited to a few lines against our Korean and Indian characters, but a majority of the scenes have stereotypes being exploited, and not in a humorous way. For example, a racist investigator (or, whatever he is, played awfully by Rob Corddry) attempts to torture a black witness by pouring a can of grape pop on the ground. But this isn't failure enough -- we see the joke of the black neighborhood being intelligent people (an orthodontist, for example) before the movie even hints at it. Why? Because those jokes have been done long before. And to count these scenes would be futile as they take up a majority of the film.

There are a few laughs, almost all of them coming from Neil Patrick Harris playing Neil Patrick Harris (NPH). He single-handedly steals the movie from Harold and Kumar. He's got more screen time than in the first movie, and it's all put to good use. So much that we are left thinking, I wish we followed NPH for the 102 minutes, instead.

If you've seen the original, there will be no curve balls this time around. If you haven't, watch the original instead and don't bother with this miserable sequel.

Rating: 3/7