This year’s “American Pie” is “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” In other words, if you want an honest-to-gosh, R-rated, raunchy, gross-out, drug-joking, college-aimed comedy, this is your ticket.
Of course, you could also stay home and watch “Masterpiece Theatre.” This is something else again.
There’s a twist to “Harold and Kumar” that makes it different from the ordinary college comedy. The two heroes of the movie are played by Asian-American actors.
Their ethnicity is neither the point of the movie, nor is it ignored. That’s exactly the right way to do it.
Just having an ethnic angle isn’t enough. The movie still has to be funny. And “Harold and Kumar” is indeed regularly, rowdily hilarious. This one will be a dorm-room staple for years.
Basically, we’ve got two guys who are newly out of college and sharing an apartment. Korean-American Harold (John Cho) has a job at an investment firm. He’s neat and responsible.
Indian-American Kumar (Kal Penn) is interviewing with med schools. But his mischievous nature won’t allow him to take the process seriously (much to the chagrin of his father and brother, both doctors).
It’s Friday night, and Harold and Kumar get stoned and watch “Sixteen Candles.” An interesting choice, since that film is beloved of Generation Y, and also has an Asian character widely derided as a stereotype.
They fix on getting their fill of burgers at White Castle, a chain restaurant (tragically unavailable in the Northwest). But the nearest White Castle is located a few suburbs away. Harold and Kumar are starving, and their journey to get their burgers takes up the remainder of the film.
They encounter one wacky distraction after another: an angry raccoon, a visit to the E.R., an Ivy League party, jail time, and a bizarre encounter with former “Doogie Howser” star Neil Patrick Harris.
One long sequence has them rescued by a mechanic (Christopher Meloni), who is covered with weeping boils. He invites them into his home, where his unaccountably sexy wife make the boys feel comfortable. And yet sort of uncomfortable at the same time.
Plenty of jokes miss, but there are so many of them, you’re rarely in a lull. There are amusing one-off roles for Jamie Kennedy, Anthony Anderson (as a drive-in clerk who goes berserk), and “Van Wilder” star Ryan Reynolds, as a male nurse.
The ads proudly proclaim that “Harold and Kumar” is “From the Director of ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’” Guilty as charged, but if Danny Leiner is not the new Billy Wilder, he at least knows how to build a comic sequence, no matter how gross the point might be.
John Cho, who was in “American Pie,” has a good everyguy quality, and Kal Penn is a comic star in the making, if only people will cast him in more things. Some people know where the jokes are in a line of dialogue, and Penn is one of those people.
If you are offended by bodily functions and the largest number of marijuana jokes since Cheech and Chong went up in smoke, then avoid this film. Everybody else, prepare to get the munchies.
Kal Penn (left) and John Cho star in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.”
“Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” HHH
Raunchy: An R-rated comedy of the “American Pie” school, about two college grads (John Cho and Kal Penn) who encounter obstacles on the road to getting hamburgers. Bodily-function and drug jokes abound, most of them funny.
Rated: R rating is for language, nudity, subject matter.
Now showing: tk
“Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” HHH
Raunchy: An R-rated comedy of the “American Pie” school, about two college grads (John Cho and Kal Penn) who encounter obstacles on the road to getting hamburgers. Bodily-function and drug jokes abound, most of them funny.
Rated: R rating is for language, nudity, subject matter.
Now showing: Everett 9, Galaxy, Grand, Marysville, Mountlake, Pacific Place, Woodinville, Cascade.
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