Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (Extreme Unrated Edition)
by Danny Leiner
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DVD details
Actor: John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick HarrisDirector: Danny Leiner
Brand: New Line Home Video (Under War
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Hindi (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-05-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: N7625
Studio: New Line Home Video
Product features:
- HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE UNRAT (DVD MOVIE)
DVD Reviews of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (Extreme Unrated Edition)
DVD Review: Harold and Kumar, the two smartest stoners in movie history
Summary: 4 Stars
In the beginning there was "Up in Smoke" with Cheech and Chong. If that was not the original stoner comedy it is at least the most pertinent reference point for considering "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," because as a society we have clearly moved from a stoner comedy in 1978 starring a Hispanic-American and an Asian-American to a stoner comedy in 2004 starring a pair of Asian-Americans. Not only that, but the two young Asian-Americans are a Korean-American and an Indian-American, and not the Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans that usually pop up in American movies (or the Chinese and Japanese that pop up in Chinese and Japanese movies, respectively).
The ethnicity of the two main characters, Harold Lee (John Cho), an investment banker, and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn), who is avoiding going to medical school, matters because while these pair are stoners, they are the two smartest stoners in the history of American cinema. Yes, I know, the bar is set pretty low in the first place in that regard, but these guys are really smart. They are both college graduates, Harold has a real job in the real world involving making real money and Kumar has perfect MCAT scores, which explains why he can perform surgery is the situation requires it. Of course the first-time writing team of Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are not Asian-American, so I cannot go so far as to argue there is a concerted political statement being made here, but in terms of playing with an ethnic stereotype this works pretty well. Besides, any excuse to make the lead characters in a movie like this something more than dope smoking idiots is always going to be a good thing.
This film is in the great tradition of "Dude, Where's My Car?" and "The Lord of the Rings," which is to say that "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" is a quest film. The title characters are already high when a White Castle commercial comes on and suddenly the most important thing in the world is getting a bag of the mini-burgers to scarf down. However, this requires getting in a car and driving to the closest White Castle, which is not in the same town. In fact, exactly where the closest White Castle is becomes a major problem in the film, which makes sense because otherwise it ends up being about an hour shorter. In between getting into Harold's car and finding the Promised Land there are a gang of skateboarders, an entire department of racist cops, a tow truck driver with serious genetic problems, and, best of all, Neil Patrick Harris (Neil Patrick Harris).
I can appreciate Harold and Kumar's situation in terms of trying to find a White Castle because I thought we had one in our town and we did, but it has since closed. So my plan to have the kids pick up White Castles to eat while watching the film, admittedly not the most original idea in the world for this one, was thwarted. But there was talk about driving 70 miles to where we know there is a White Castle and if it was not for the fact that the movie would have been over by the time whoever made the trip came back with cold burgers we might have considered it. So someone was sent out for tacos instead, which made no sense for watching a movie starring a pair of Asian-Americans, so we ate the tacos without watching the movie (No, when I watched the movie I did not eat Oriental food either, so the whole logic here fell apart completely).
Director Danny Leiner did "Dude, Where's My Car?" and the parallels between the two become really obvious once Harold's car gets stolen by the actor who played Doogie Howswer (playing himself). But this movie really is twice as good. Is it because Leiner learned from his mistakes the first time around? Is it because writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are twice as good as Philip Stark (who at least had the "Pink Eye" episode of "South Park" on his resume)? Is it because John Cho and Kal Penn are twice the actors Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott happen to be?
Now, that last one I am pretty sure I can quantify, because Cho and Penn do a great job of keeping these characters real and quite different from what we usually find in such films, but I keep coming back to the ethnicity of the two stars, although the film does not go overboard on the Asian stereotypes (there is a scene where Harold has to deal with a group of other Korean-Americans that could be right out of "Gilmore Girls"). Would this film be as funny if the two leads were something other than Asian-American? It really matters that these two guys are smart and the film takes advantage of the stereotype that Asian-Americans are smart to make that point. Lots of stoners have been obsessed with the quest for weed and a bad case of the munchies, but Kumar is smarter than all of them put together, which makes his dream world involving a giant bag of pot that much funnier. Then there is Harold and his quest to at least speak to Maria (Paula Garces), the beautiful girl he keeps meeting in the elevator in his apartment building.
The other way in which "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" goes against type in the stoner movie genre is that there is actually a sense of personal growth for the boys after their experience. In this case the film is much more reminiscent of "The Lord of the Rings" than "Dude, Where's My Car?" You do not expect stoners to grow up at the end of their quest (you expect them to spend all their reward money getting Van Halen to play at their birthday party), which just gets us back to the ethnicity of Harold and Kumar. It is rather difficult to walk that kind of a tightrope in a comedy (see "White Chicks"), but this film manages to do it. It will also absolutely cure you of ever wanting to sneak into the girl's bathroom in a college dorm.
Description of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (Extreme Unrated Edition)
In the year's funniest comedy, two guys on a quest to satisfy their cravings for burgers find themselves on a hilarious all-night adventure as they run into one screwy obstacle after another.DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
DVD ROM Features
Deleted Scenes
Featurette
Interviews
Music Video
Other:Spansh Subtitles!
From the director of Dude, Where's My Car? comes another crazed tale of two friends on a perilous quest--in this case, to eat burgers at the fast food restaurant White Castle. The pair--repressed Harold (John Cho, Better Luck Tomorrow) and freewheeling Kumar (Kal Penn, Love Don't Cost a Thing)--get extremely high and set off on the road, only to be sidetracked by skateboarding hooligans, racist cops, an inbred tow truck driver, and Neil Patrick Harris--yes, Doogie Howser, M.D. The humor is all over the map, and it would be nice if there were one female character who wasn't a caricature, but Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle has a loose, gregarious charm, and the movie's canniness about the cliches of the buddy-movie genre give it a sneaky subversive feel--just the fact that neither of the heroes is white puts a different spin on just about every circumstance. Surprisingly clever, cheerfully stupid. --Bret Fetzer
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