There is a fine line between a dumb comedy that is entertaining and a dumb comedy that is just dumb; the first Harold and Kumar movie straddled that very fine line all the way through which led to a pretty funny, partially frustrating movie. Yet, I wasn't sure the movie really needed a sequel, but it found a nice audience on DVD and so they gave it one, 4 years later. Of course, my main reason to go watch was the return of Neil Patrick Harris playing a drugged out and over sexed version of himself.
4 years ago we watched Harold and Kumar make an epic journey to reach a White Castle burger joint and then come home so Harold could finally make his play for a girl. She is leaving for Amsterdam and Kumar suggests they should follow her. This movie picks up minutes after the first ended. Harold(John Cho) and Kumar(Kal Penn) are getting cleaned up and packing for the trip. In the airport, Kumar is subject to a "random" search, thus beginning a movie of stereotype debunking, kind of. Also at the airport, the two boys run into Vanessa(Daneel Harris) who dated Kumar a few years ago and her fiance, a Republican tool named Colton(Eric Winter). Throughout the movie we see flashbacks to when Kumar and Vanessa met and how she turned him into a pot head. Once on the plane, Kumar follows Harold into the bathroom and starts to spark some weed into a "smokeless bong." Someone on the plane thinks they hear and see a bomb and the two heroes are cuffed and questioned briefly before being put in Guantanamo Bay. There, they meet real terrorists who help Harold and Kumar escape. Government agent Ron Fox(The most obnoxious man alive Rob Cordry)thinks the two guys are serious terrorists and he questions their friends and parents in scenes that require the absence of a brain in order to laugh. Harold and Kumar make it back to the U.S.A and think if they can get to Texas and to Colton he can help them out. They trek from Miami to Texas in the deep south and run into a married couple who happens to be brother and sister who have a cyclops inbred freak for a son; they run into the KKK; scary black guys and of course Neil Patrick Harris! Oh and by the end of the movie they have smoked weed with the President (the actor is not a very good impressionist).
I do not have a problem with pot head movies being ambitious; in fact, I have high hopes for Pineapple Express being the first big budget action stoner movie. This movie, though, might have been just a bit too ambitious. First of all, they try and tackle issues about why weed is not legal, which is fine and even some of the issues of racial profiling are fine, but between scenes where Rob Cordry is pouring out grape soda to try and enrage a black man and Cordry pouring out change to enrage a few Jews, this movie is just stretching those lofty goals of stereotypes. The first Harold and Kumar movies was funny because it was never mean spirited. It was just a fun movie about two stoners looking for burgers. No one was really hurt or offended in the process and there was really limited scat humor. The sequel has fart jokes, poop jokes, semen stain jokes and all kinds of toilet humor. A lot of just felt rushed and for a sequel four years in the making, nothing should feel rushed. Add to that the movie is about 15 minutes too long and has a plot so full of holes about 40 minutes in I just threw my hands up and said "Well, whatever."
That is not to say there is not a lot of comedy in the movie because I laughed, a lot. Most of that is thanks to the two lead actors. John Cho and Kal Penn have such an easy chemistry and are so good natured you almost wish they were in a movie that was written better. the jokes are so mean spirited and uncreative but the two actors really do their best and still play these very likable pot heads. Plus, Neil Patrick Harris is an extended cameo brings all kinds of laughs. As a guy high on dozens of mushrooms seeing unicorns and wanting to brand his initials onto the asses of whores, Harris completely obliterates the wholesome image of his youth. I thought the movie would completely change his character since Harris has come out of the closet as being gay, but they kept the same horn dog, sniffing cocaine off a stripper's ass Harris from the first movie. Some of the side gags work like the cyclops freaky baby even if it is a very mean joke. The constant references to Sloth from The Goonies provides a lot of laughs for that scene and the KKK scene is actually kind of funny, made even funnier by Kumar's nonchalant way of dealing with everything.
It helps to have either seen the first movie dozens of times, or to have just watched it because there are many jokes that callback to the first movie. Luckily I had just watched the movie the night before so I got most of those jokes. Where the first one straddled the line between low brow and good taste, this movie weaves back and forth over that line like a drunk driver. The genuinely funny moments actually make the bad jokes more frustrating because it makes you feel this movie could have been made without Rob Cordry wiping his ass with the bill of rights and pulling it out to show the camera the shit stains that were formally on his ass. Actually, it makes you think this movie could have been made without Rob Cordry who is moving in on David Cross' turf as the most obnoxious bit player in comedies. I know I am not the target audience for these types of movies, but I wanted to like it and I almost did.
Final Grade: C
No comments:
Post a Comment