STUDIO: New Line
RELEASE DATE: April 25, 2008
STARRING: John Cho, Kal Penn, Rob Corddry, Roger Bart, and Neil Patrick Harris
WRITTEN BY: Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg
DIRECTED BY: Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg
GENRE: Comedy
RATING: R

When Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle ended with its titular heroes about to race off to Amsterdam to chase Roldy's love, Maria, it felt like we might get a sequel to this word-of-mouth hit in twelve months or less. But, as anyone who has ever relied on someone with a marijuana habit will tell you, it takes pot users a LOT longer to do anything, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised that it's taken four years for Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) to continue their adventures in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay? Despite the long wait, after a shaky first few hits from the bong, Guantanamo Bay settles into a confident and unpredictable groove, making it one of the funnier movies of the year so far. A little less tightly scripted than the first film but, at times, even funnier and more assured, Guantanamo Bay is unlikely to be anyone's absolute favorite movie of the year, or even the season, but it's a hard movie to truly dislike. It's twisted, gross-out, pot-headed, comedy heart is always in the right place and, despite my better judgment, I smiled through almost its entirety. You can't say that about a lot of movies this year or even a lot of comedies made since the boys ate their sliders. It's good to have them back.

Guantanamo Bay opens immediately after the end of White Castle by reintroducing its two lead characters in a style that will typify the entire film. Harold showers after his adventure, thinking about how he finally expressed his love for Maria and his plans to chase his girl around the world to Amsterdam. Beautiful music plays, and we see Maria in slo-mo. The sweet moment is cut by the sound of Kumar expunging what happens to the average human after eating 30 White Castle hamburgers, and there you have Harold and Kumar in a nutshell - relatively understandable moments and characters cut by ridiculous gross-out humor. In Guantanamo Bay, you'll see an obscene amount of pubic hair, hear several fart noises, watch a man orgasm in his own face, and that's just in the first reel. We can't even really write about Neil Patrick Harris' trip to a whore house without getting age verification.

Following the sliders’ slide out, Harold and Kumar head to the airport to jet to Amsterdam, but Kumar makes the insane decision of bringing a bong on the plane, which gets confused for a bomb. Thus the poor guys get arrested (by an over-the-top Rob Corddry) and are sent to Guantanamo Bay to eat a "cock-meat sandwich". After an attempted "feeding" goes wrong, a gate gets left open, the boys make it out of the prison, and they jump a boat from Cuba to Miami. To clear their names, they try to get from Florida to Texas and get the help of a former girlfriend of Kumar's new fiancee, a politically powerful man, who also happens to be a major douche bag. Can the boys clear their names, escape the law, get high along the way, and even possibly get Kumar's girl back from the obvious jerk she's about to marry? Along the way, H&K run into rednecks, KKK members, NPH, and even the President of the United States.

Without giving too much away that hasn't already been in the previews, that final impersonation of "Dubya" is a perfect encapsulation of the entire film. If you're the kind of viewer who thinks that two potheads parachuting into the President's ranch is too ridiculous for you to possibly find it funny, see Baby Mama this weekend. And, even at its outset, fans of the movie will probably think a Bush impression is a bad idea (unless they're too high to care). But, after the set-up, there are a few jokes in the Bush/Harold/Kumar scene that are undeniably funny. Bush's argument as to why it's not hypocritical for him to lead a country that locks up pot smokers but smoke down himself is borderline genius. Harold and Kumar is constantly threatening to fall apart and then the writers throw a joke completely out of left field that totally works. Every time I wanted to write it off, the movie found a way to make me laugh. Comedy lately has been so predictable (if you gave a ten-year-old the premise for Fool's Gold, they could write the entire screenplay) that it's unbelievably refreshing to see a movie with out-of-left-field jokes like a cyclops baby, a Starship Troopers reference, and bottomless parties. For some, the comedy glass will be more half-empty than half-full, but fans of the original movie and people exhausted by the state of the genre in general will drink up and hope they get another serving sooner than 2012.