MOVIES: Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

I wasn't expecting much from a movie called Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and that's basically what I got. Maybe I should've expected even less. But how could I? It's a stoner comedy by the guy who directed Dude, Where's My Car?* That bar is not set very high. (Heh, I said "high".)

It's funny enough, with a few good extended laughs, but for some reason I had built myself up into thinking this would be some kind of comedy classic I needed to see in the theater. Partly due to a lot of hype on various blogs and review sites, partly from Ebert & Roeper giving it two thumbs up (I figured, if they recommend a stoner comedy, it must be very funny indeed). And it's just not that good.

Again, I'm aware that I'm talking about Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle here. And I'm aware that it seems a little silly to claim disappointment in a movie with that title. Still, I did expect more.

The two leads are definitely very funny people, especially John Cho as Harold. He's been good in a lot of different things, and he's good here. And the movie has a decent amount of comedy in it, as well as some excellent cameo appearances, including Fred Willard as an admissions officer at a medical school, Jamie Kennedy as a strange man in the forest, Ryan Reynolds as a male nurse, and, best of all, Neil Patrick Harris as himself. You can't resist laughing when Doogie Howser tells Harold and Kumar, "I'm tripping my balls off," or, "I left some love stains in the back seat." You just can't. Well, maybe you can, I don't know you very well. But I couldn't.

I think one of the problems I had with this movie may have come from the audience I saw it with. There were very few people to begin with, and the ones who were there were often uncomfortably silent while I was laughing, which made me a little self-conscious, and less willing to laugh. Not that the audience hated the movie, or never laughed; they just were fairly reserved for a raunchy, dopey, drug-related comedy like this one.

I still laughed a lot, though. It's not Anchorman funny, but it's still a good deal funnier than it has any right to be, and it actually makes a few clever observations about how Asians are perceived, and expected to behave, in America. It's a definite DVD rental.

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*One of my favorite jokes ever from The Daily Show was when Jon Stewart claimed the sequel would be named, Oh, There It Is.