Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

Rating:2.5]

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was really less of a stoner film and more of a clever sendup of cultural stereotypes (okay, and a stoner film). Throw in a now-legendary Neil Patrick Harris cameo, and you’ve got all the makings of a cult classic. (Indeed, while the film did middling box office, it cleaned up on DVD.)
Very much to the producers’ credit, they don’t stray far from the formula with the sequel, which has the boys being mistaken for terrorists and sent to (and escaping from) Guantanamo Bay, crashing a Klan rally, accompanying Neil Patrick Harris to a whorehouse, and talking daddy issues (and smoking some kind bud) with the Commander-in-Chief. John Choo and Kal Penn make for enormously likeable leads—and while some of the jokes fall flat (a fantasy sex sequence involving Kumar, a hot chick, and a giant bag of weed should’ve been filed under: “Bad ideas conceived while high”), many more hit their targets. What’s more, the film is slyly smart about racial profiling and the war on terror. A stoner film with a brain? Duuuuuuude.