Harold and Kumar are at it again

Last weekend, the sequel to “Harold and Kumar go to White castle” opened nationwide in theaters. “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo” continues the legacy of Harold and Kumar in a new and crazier storyline.

The story continues to follow the characters right where the last film left them. Only an hour or two has elapsed since their White Castle quest and the two are preparing for their trip to Amsterdam.

Things get mixed up when Kumar sneaks away into the bathroom on the airplane to take a few hits off of his “smoke-less” bong. The plane encounters some turbulence, which causes the bathroom door to swing open, exposing Kumar and what looks like a bomb in his hands.

The two are detained and dropped off at Guantanamo as suspected terrorists.

The film follows Harold and Kumar as they try to clear their names after they escape from Guantanamo.

Skeptics may think this new installment is just more of the same, but John Cho (Harold) disagrees: “The first movie was plot-less, and it involved us getting high, getting hungry, looking for a burger place and then a bunch of stuff happened to us on the way to the burger place. And this movie has a very traditional or much more traditional plot with really high stakes. So that is, I would say, the primary difference, and then in other respects I think we tried to, as a good sequel should, ramp up everything.”

Cho also suggested the idea of the storyline came from the need to continue the iconoclastic humor from the first installment. “I think because we didn’t get the green light for a few years really, they had time to sit on it and also time to kind of clock what people were appreciating about the first one and kind of the political, racial and social humor became such an identifying mark of the first movie that the audience kind of forced the hand. And they felt that they had to inject some of that subversive, political humor into the second one as well. And they needed something bigger and better, and at the time the Guantanamo stuff was really in the news, as it continues to be. So they felt that that would be a fun way to get that going.”

Clearly there is a significant increase in the cultural depth of this movie.

Beyond that, the movie touches upon a subject in American society which is politically charged: to detain people in Guantanamo Bay based on the idea that someone may be a terrorist has very specific relations to the American political landscape. But does the movie lose its sense of humor for the sake of making a political statement?

Kal Penn, the actor who plays Kumar, does not think so. “I don’t think it’s a political film in terms of taking a stance on anything, but definitely it inherently deals with some of the pop culture that surrounds the political sphere right now. I mean, we’ve got a caricature of President Bush in the movie, so you can’t deny that you’re playing with the idea of politics, but I don’t think it’s a departure. I think that one of the things that was fun to play with was the fact that the stakes are so much higher. As John just pointed out, with a movie like this where these two guys who you’ve spent the night with getting hamburgers are now running for their lives and trying to secure their freedom. So the type of humor is the same, but because the stakes are higher, and there is a little bit of different dichotomy between the two guys and the things they can play with I guess,” Penn said.

BOB BEERS
Culture Writer

Related Posts:

1. ‘Alpha Dog’: an overlooked crowd pleaser with blockbuster potential
2. ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force’ cracks it up
3. Get on the edge with “Jackass 2"
4. Along Came Polly;
   so long eight dollars
5. "Sky Captain"