'Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle' leaves a bad taste

Friday, July 30, 2004

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Just when we thought the stoner comedy was a hazy relic of the past, along comes a new farce that has every hallmark of having been written while under the influence.

MOVIE REVIEW

HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE

DIRECTOR: Danny Leiner

CAST: John Cho, Kal Penn, David Krumholtz, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Neil Patrick Harris

RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes

RATING: R for strong language, sexual content, drug use and some crude humor

WHERE: Bella Bottega 11, Cinema 17, East Valley 13, Everett 9, Factoria, Galaxy Tacoma 6, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Marysville Cinema 14, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Pacific Place, Parkway Plaza 12, South Hill Mall, Valley Drive-in, Woodinville 12

GRADE: C-

"Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" is one of those rare movies that has its entire plot contained in the title. Harold (John Cho, of the "American Pie" films) is a timid Asian-American, white-collar cubicle slave at a brokerage firm. His roommate Kumar (Kal Penn of "Van Wilder" and "Malibu's Most Wanted") is an Indian-American college grad deftly avoiding his future while his father supports him. The two get baked, get the munchies and go driving off in search of the hamburger Holy Grail to satisfy their cravings. (Kids, don't try this at home -- these are professionals.)

Along the way, paranoid Harold and reckless Kumar get lost in the hinterlands, where they tangle with a gang of white supremacist extreme-sports hooligans and run afoul of cracker cops who have turned racial profiling into a way of life

It turns out rural New Jersey is a "Twilight Zone" of sex fantasies, hillbilly horrors, homophobic hysteria and racial stereotypes seen through the other end of the telescope. It's like a feature length dream sequence, except no one wakes up.

The official R rating is for "strong language, sexual content, drug use and some crude humor," but the MPAA is just being polite. It's all crude. Director Danny Leiner executes the "I can't believe I just saw that" bad-taste gags with more gusto than invention and all the finesse of a dirty joke on a primary school playground.

Cho and Penn give it their all, as if to prove that bad taste embraces all ethnicities. In a weird way, they make the point that the film's clunky lampoons of cultural stereotypes fails to accomplish.

Harold and Kumar are just a couple of American boys fighting for their right to be just as self-absorbed, decadent and stupid as their caucasian counterparts. Their ethnicity is beside the point. Except, of course, when it's funny.