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Movie. Review
‘Harold and Kumar’full of
laughs, social undercurrents
HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO
WHITE CASTLE
★ ★★ out of ☆☆☆☆☆
BY D.E. MCGUIRT
THE GAMECOCK
Since there isn’t a White Castle
within a 1,000-mile radius of our
fair city of Columbia, it might be
worthwhile to first explain that
White Castle is a 24-hour fast-food
joint that serves miniature ham
burgers real cheap (by the way,
one wonders if White Castle cor
porate headquarters picked up
some of the tab for the film’s bud
get). It sounds simple enough, but
in director Danny Leiner’s new
film “Harold and Kumar Go to
White Castle,” this fast-food joint
is oh-so-much more than that.
For Harold Lee and Kumar
Patel, White Castle represents all
that is good in life. They come to
this revelation while watching TV
after an evening of drug use. A
commercial featuring a sultry
voiced temptress extolling the
virtues of White Castle’s value
meal rings the Pavlov bell, and
next thing you know, they’re in
the car and on their way.
Odysseus had his Penelope, Don
Quixote had his Dulcinea, George
W. has his Iraqi oil, and Harold
and Kumar have White Castle
hamburgers.
And yes, the stars of this stoner
movie are Asian. This fact, be
sides breathing life into the con
ventional American toker flick,
serves as the driving force behind
the movie’s plot. Both characters
spend the length of the film strug
gling with the stereotypes associ
ated with their ethnicities.
Straight man Harold (played by
John Cho), a Korean junior in
vestment banker, has to put up
with a couple of ex-fratboy
coworkers who like to dump their
busy work on the “hardworking
Asian guy.” Freewheeling Kumar
(played by Kal Penn), drifting be
tween college and med school, has
to deal with the lofty expectations
of a close-knit Indian family full
of physicians. And then there are
the extreme sports dudes, bel
ligerent cops, boil-covered funda
mentalists and gassy, buxom
British twins who keep showing
up as foils. Our heroes have quite
a night ahead of them.
As a comedy in the Cheech-and
Chong strain, “Harold” has some
decent laughs. Screenwriters Jon
Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg
subscribe to the belief that if you
throw enough jokes at an audi
ence, some of them will stick. And
just enough of them do to keep one
relatively happy.
As you’d probably expect for a
movie from the director of “Dude,
Where’s My Car?” it’s pure id.
Flatulence, boobies and jokes
about pubes show up on cue to
satisfy the target audience. An
Asian student organization at
Princeton puts on a hell of a dorm
party. Neil Patrick Harris of
“Doogie Howser, MD,” happy to
be cashing a paycheck again,
makes a bizarre and hilarious
cameo as some sort of sex-crazed,
car-seat-humping prophet wan
Horino tho Wow .Torcov u/ilHor
ness. This alone will probably
make it worth the price of mati
nee admission for some.
But there is a subtext at work
in the film. Any cinema geek
worth his film-society member
ship card will tell you that White
Castle represents assimilation
into mainstream America for
these second-generation immi
grants. In a healthy dose of fair
turnaround, the film reduces each
and every WASP character to the
one-dimensional status usually set
aside for Asians and Latinos in
Hollywood films. It unfortunately
crosses the line into sanctimo
niousness for a few minutes when
Harold is arrested and put in a cell
with a falsely accused black man.
But don’t lose patience, male
teenager target audience: A
psychedelic cheetah ride, extreme
hang-gliding and some majestic
little burgers soon follow.
Comments on this story?E-mail
gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu
Kal Penn, left, and John Cho star ln”Harold and Kumar Go to
White Castle,” a comedy in the tradition of Cheech and Chong.
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