Even audience members who hadn’t enjoyed a few “sandwiches” before their viewing of “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” could have fun with the pot-fueled quest for midnight munchies. It was an underappreciated, vulgar comedy with genuine characters and a refreshingly progressive approach to race in lowbrow cinema. But cult favorites rarely survive the sequel treatment, as we discover in “Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay.” Without the aid of a big fat “sandwich,” audience members will likely be bored to tears by its contrived plot filled with recycled gags.
“Guantanamo Bay” picks up where “White Castle” left off—with our ethnically diverse duo on a plane to Amsterdam and Harold (John Cho) hoping to reignite his brief fling with neighbor Maria (Paula Garcés). Ever obstructing his buddy’s designs and unable to delay toking up until they land, Kumar (Kal Penn) smuggles his smokeless bong aboard—a device air marshals onboard spot and assume is an explosive. Caught in a post-9/11 wave of xenophobia, the pair is thrown into the custody of Homeland Security, which ships the pair off to the titular Cuban prison.
A narrow escape from the abusive guards of Guantanamo brings the pair to the coast of Florida, where they hope to beg, borrow and steal their way to Texas to crash the wedding of Kumar’s former girlfriend Vanessa (Danneel Harris) and use her new beau’s contacts in Washington to clear their names.
The original title of this film was simply “Harold and Kumar Go to Amsterdam,” which implies that at some point the plot was a lot less convoluted and outlandish. The contrived story removes much of the first film’s simle charm, and Kumar’s former love life seems shoehorned into the script. However, despite film’s ludicrously complex story, it still manages to fall into a very predictable road trip not unlike Harold and Kumar’s last outing—allowing ample opportunity for recycled jokes and sight gags.
Fortunately, the film also reuses the comedic daring Harold and Kumar employed in their last outing. The writers tackle racial issues in the current social climate with admirable comic bravado, mixing the dick and fart jokes with hard truths sugarcoated in stupid. However, a lot of this “groundbreaking” material is reused from the first film, diminishing any real insight it has.
Not even the legendary Neil Patrick Harris can renew this warmed-over sequel with any hint of fresh material. The hard-drinking, hard-loving Harris reprises his cameo midway through the film, another recycled plot device that seems botched in the execution. The entire scene, though hilarious, seems ad-libbed, a testament to the acting prowess of the “How I Met Your Mother” star.
In the end, audiences are left with a boring retread through a series of repeated gags that don’t hold up as well the second time around. The ten minutes of laughs you’ll glean aren’t worth the 90 minutes you’ll have to suffer through.
