items tagged with Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY

We've thus far managed to survive without sequels to Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin and Intolerance, so I'm not sure the world really needed a follow-up to Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, 2004's ne plus ultra of gross-out stoner comedies. Yet it's clear that we could've done a helluva lot worse than Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, a take-a-hit-and-miss effort in which, compared to its forebear, the highs are no higher, the lows are a tad lower, and the intentional stupidity is again tempered with bursts of shockingly subversive wit. As sequels go, it's no Godfather Part II, but it ain't Godfather Part III, either.

THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN

Considering the film’s title, this might sound ludicrous. But in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Steve Carell, playing our hapless hero Andrew, gives what might become a legendary comedic screen performance.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is something unusual: a movie wherein everyone involved appears to be having a good time. Of course, you could say the same about Cannonball Run or Ocean’s Twelve, but the difference here is that the audience is allowed to have a good time, too. Based on Douglas Adams’ cheeky, beloved sci-fi novel, Hitchhiker’s Guide, which has been in various stages of film development for the better part of two decades, is a goofy, oftentimes glorious mess of a movie. If George Lucas and the Monty Python troupe ever spawned, the results would look something like this; I started smiling during the film’s opening credits and only stopped to occasionally laugh out loud.

How strange that, of the two movies I recently caught as a double-feature – Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, directed by Dude, Where’s My Car? auteur Danny Leiner – not only is Harold & Kumar the better of the two, it’s the only one really worth discussing in any detail.