HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY

Pictures courtesty of New Line Cinema

Two bright, but mismatched friends find their trip to Amsterdam rerouted to a terrorist imprisonment camp in the comedy HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY. Just after their wild evening to the fast-food joint WHITE CASTLE, Harold and Kumar decide to travel to Amsterdam, where Harold can reunite with his dream girl, and Kumar can enjoy some marijuana legally. The trip goes sour when Kumar decides to inhale some weed during their flight to Europe, and the authorities mistake Kumar’s bong for a bomb. This leads to Harold and Kumar being suspected of terrorism, and being thrown into a high security cell at Guantanamo Bay.

More of the same would summarize HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY in relation to their trip to White Castle. This red-state lambasting, blue state ideological comedy severely lacks both clever social and political commentary and basic comedic elements. In between the first and second HAROLD AND KUMAR flicks a similarly themed, equally offensive, but more often than not hilarious comedy was released, BORAT. Where BORAT allowed its subjects to paint their own derogatory self-portrait, HAROLD AND KUMAR takes familiar, easy and crude potshots at their victims. Southern Americans are in-breeders, racists or hors, and those of a conservative mindset are portrayed as small-minded, racist hypocrites. There’s no joke to low brow for HAROLD AND KUMAR, and no body fluid, function or orifice that escapes writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg. Even the appearance of Neil Patrick Harris as Neil Patrick Harris can’t salvage this mess, as his role turns out to be a tired repeat, as opposed to his invigorating and hilarious turn in the original. If you enjoyed HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE than their trip to and from Guantanamo Bay should be right up your alley, if not, like me it will be a painful exercise in raunchiness.

Grade: D