The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry (r) puts the fear of the man into the hapless Harold (l) and Kumar
On the heels of their epic mission to find the best munchies, stoned roomies Harold and Kumar are at it again. This time, they’re travelling across America to clear their names of an attempted terrorism charge. While there’s no lack of gross-out humour — from low-hanging fruit like diarrhea and ejaculation to the graphic yet somehow compelling “bottomless” pool party — the film is unquestionably imbued with undercurrents of racial and political satire. With a strong supporting cast, including former Daily Show correspondents Rob Corddry and Ed Helms, the movie is at its best when aping Dr. Strangelove, not when it’s rehashing Porky’s. Still, the constant deluge of frat-comedy makes it hard to imagine many viewers walking away with an enlightened viewpoint.
“I’m not sure whether we can heal anything,” says John Cho, whose Harold serves as straight man to Kal Penn’s Kumar. “At best, we’re providing a service by bringing the subject up and making a joke about it. I’m not sure why Americans have such a difficult time talking in earnest about race. My sense is that the sentiment is that racism is done, we’ve put it behind us and we don’t want to talk about it anymore. So we’re touchy about it, and perhaps by laughing about it and poking fun at it we can make people think for just a nanosecond. If not, we’ve made them laugh, and that’s good enough.”
Indeed, the movie’s premise provides ample territory for comedic flourish. Picking up mere hours after the original adventure left off, the sequel kicks off with our heroes embarking on the journey that every pothead longs for — a trip to Amsterdam. When Kumar gets busted trying to spark a bowl in the plane’s bathroom, the other passengers assume his bong is a bomb. Things go altogether sideways, landing the boys in a cell at the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison. The story contrasts crass dick jokes with all-too-serious political issues at every level, up to and including its portrayal of George W. Bush as an easygoing doper with outstanding daddy issues.
“I think no one really knows what George Bush is like,” explains Cho. “We portray him as a good guy, as a lovable guy, but there are those who think he’s evil, so he’s a bit of a mystery to us. I’ve had this argument a lot of times. Is he really stupid? Is he ill-intentioned? Is he malicious? Is Dick Cheney really in control? What’s going on over there? It’s a big mystery, and that’s part of the fascination.”
It’s no surprise that the stars of Harold and Kumar are prone to exploring more intellectual territory than their genre tends towards. Although best known for characters like the infamous “MILF guy” in American Pie, Cho earned his chops as a stage actor while studying English literature in California. In fact, while many of the racial send-ups in the new film come off a bit limp, Cho reveals his knack as a satirist in a brief flashback that subtly pokes fun at post-secondary Asian cliques.
“Originally, Harold was supposed to be a huge bookworm, and I said, well, that’s not surprising, and it’s not funny, and we only have two seconds, so let’s make the most of it and go somewhere different,” he recalls. “I think we can do something very specifically Asian-American and collegiate here, and it’ll make a great visual.’” He wasn’t mistaken — even without dialogue, the brief glance of Harold’s former self conjures images of Dance Dance Revolution and bubble tea, an effective and relatively tasteful lampoon. “The writers argued that they didn’t know any Asian guys like that in college, but I convinced them it would play.”
In the end, Harold and Kumar do make it to Amsterdam — escaping from Gitmo and getting back to the U.S. actually turns out to be surprisingly simple — but, predictably, we realize that it was the journey that mattered all along. More important, however, is the realization that this isn’t a drug movie, and it’s not even a gross-out movie. At its core, it’s an “issues” movie piggybacking on the success of a time-tested moneymaker to sow some seeds in the minds of its viewers. And that’s good shit, man.
