RATING:

Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn, Anthony Anderson, Dan Bochart, Steve Braun, Brooke D'Orsay, Ethan Embry, Paula Garcés, Luis Guzmán, Neil Patrick Harris, Jon Hurwitz, Sandy Jobin-Bevans, Kate Kelton, Jamie Kennedy, David Krumholtz, Bobby Lee, Christopher Meloni, Ryan Reynolds, Hayden Schlossberg, Siu Ta, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Dov Tiefenbach, Robert Tinkler, Fred Willard, Gary Anthony Williams. Written by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg. Directed by Danny Leiner.

Rated R (for strong language, sexual content, drug use and some crude humor)

Well, I just finished watching Harold and Kumar and I thought it was best to sit down and write this review as fast as I could before I excrete it out of my system. Let me start by saying that this movie was an hour and a half of my life that I will never get back again. The only saving grace is that I actually went and took 2 very long restroom breaks during the screening.

The movie is directed by Danny Leiner, who also d stuff like “Freaks and Geeks”, “Ever wood”, and an episode of “The mind of a married man”. Most recently in theaters he did “Dude where’s my car”. Well I was left wondering, dude where’s the receipt is for the money the studio gave the people responsible for this mess?

The writing team of John Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg should be taken out to the back of the studio system alley and dumped in a canister of garbage. While sitting watching his film, all I could think of was all the struggling writers in Hollywood that have 10 time better stuff waiting to be discovered, instead having to grin and bare it because they haven’t been as lucky as these two writer. Let me tell you about the movie.

Harold and Kumar is about these two guys, that get an insatiable urge to eat white castle burgers. So they go on a quest to get some. Still want more? Well that’s it. That’s the whole story. Now obviously you can’t make a story like this and think its going to b a hit. So the makers of this film went and acquired the services of John Cho, who played John in American Pie and Kal Penn, who played Taj Mahal Badalandabad in Van Wilder. Why you ask? I don’t know. Apparently their individual performances were funny enough to team these two up in a comedy movie and I suppose some one figured the rest would be history.

Moreover, I was already cramping from the fast food film I was being served when all of the sudden it happened. I was witnessing a Niel Patrick Harris Cameo. Now I don’t know if he is a friend of the film makers or the actors, or if he needed some quick cash for personal reasons, but I have no idea what he was doing in this film. Although there were laughs in the room where I was watching this film, I think they must have been pity laughs. Like the kind you do when you take a real nasty fall and it hurts so bad, all you can do is laugh? The even sadder part is the fact that “doogie” as he is referred to in the movie plays a sex addict, looking to score some “poon”. He even goes as far as to start rubbing and humping the back of the driver seat in the car he’s in. Later in the film, he apologizes for stuff he’s done in the movie to the two leads, especially for “leaving a stain in the back seat”. Wow!

The film goes on to other wild scenarios like a close encounter with a cheetah that quickly turns into a mellow moment between Harold and Kumar as they share a joint with the 4 legged pot smoking animal, to a fall induced animation sequence with Harold and the girl he’s interested in, played by Paula Garces, that featured animated white castle burgers dancing around in support.

It’s been an hour or so since seeing the film and the cramping and soreness is just now settling down, but I can’t help but to wonder if the demented geniuses behind this installment are sitting around wondering what other adventures to put these two through. I for one hope they’re not, and would like to give them the same advice crisis counselors tell their traumatized clients while in psychotherapy…..please, it’s in the past, let it go.

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