Review: Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (***)

HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE
A film review by Steve Rhodes

Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****): ***


In Danny Liner's sweetly silly HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE, John
Chow and Kale Penn play a couple of part-time stoners named Harold and
Kumar. In a quest one night for some variety in their fast food diet, they
decide to leave their New Jersey apartment in order to eat at White Castle
hamburgers, the East Coast gold standard for burgers. (Here on the West
coast, it's In 'N Out Burger.) Their adventure, which is filled with side
trips and disasters, is as much a search for weed as it is for meat.



The movie pokes fun at the overachieving culture of Asian-Americans. Harold
is a junior investment banker who takes abuse everywhere but doesn't like
it. He is currently having a fling with Maria (Paula Garcés), a woman with
whom he has a ten second relationship most days in the elevator. He doesn't
actually speak or do anything, but he has plans and dreams.



Meanwhile fellow brainiac Kumar is supposed to be going to med school to
follow in his father's footsteps. No chance of that, however, since Kumar
blows off his med school interviews and uses his medical textbook for paper
to smoke his joints. Like Harold, he has dreams too, but his are of having
sex with a human sized bag of pot. Did I mention yet how hilariously
over-the-top the script is? There is bathroom humor aplenty, but it is
surprising how fresh they make most of the recycled material feel.



In easily the funniest and most outlandish episode, the boys wreck their car
and are picked up by a pus-ridden redneck named Freakshow, played by an
unrecognizable Christopher Meloni from "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."
Freakshow, who appears to be a human cannibal from a cheesy horror show,
brings the boys home to meet his wife, Lianne (Malin Akerman), a seductive
and gorgeous girl. He tells the lads to have sex with his wife, which seems
too good to be true, but the guys engage in a quick game of
rock-paper-scissors to see who will be first. Needless to say, things don't
turn out quite the way Harold and Kumar had hoped.



Another episode has them picking up a horny Neil Patrick Harris, who plays
himself in the film. Harris has only one thing on his mind in the movie,
and it isn't fast food or marijuana. He plays a bizarre character in a
movie full of them.



I've probably told you enough, and I didn't even get to the skinheads who
destroy a convenience store with an aerial game of "extreme kayaking." You
have to see it to believe it.



HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE runs a fast 1:27. It is rated R for
"strong language, sexual content, drug use and some crude humor" and would
be acceptable for teenagers.



My son Jeffrey, age 15, thought the film was hilarious and gave it a full
****. He said that it may be pointless, but it sure was really, really
funny and surprisingly original.



The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, July 30, 2004. In
the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century
theaters and the Camera Cinemas.



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