Movie Review: A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (2011) 

Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulman

Written by Jay Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Paula Garces, Daneel Ackles

Release Date November 4th, 2011

Published November 3rd, 2011

"A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" is gloriously offensive. There are scenes of such specifically offensive humor that I really don't feel comfortable describing what takes place in any kind of detail. With that offensiveness stipulated, let me state clearly that I loved this movie. I'm not sure I can recommend it, but I love. "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" finds our friends Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) having grown apart. Harold has chosen to become a grown up. He has a job on Wall Street, a house in the suburbs and he and his wife Maria (Paula Garces) are trying to have a baby.

Kumar on the other hand has stunted his maturity. Kumar is a degenerate pothead, who we see buying pot and smoking up with a mall Santa Claus in the opening scenes of the film. Kumar lost his job because he failed a drug test and lost his girlfriend (Daneel Ackles) because of his slothfulness. Our heroes are reunited when a package appears at Kumar's apartment addressed to Harold. Kumar delivers the package to Harold's house and from there the latest H & K adventure begins and proceeds in the most irreverent and stunningly offensive fashion.

Also returning for "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" is the brilliant Neil Patrick Harris who finds new and wondrous ways to send up himself. Harris came out a few years ago and naturally Harris makes great sport of his homosexuality in "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas." Thomas Lennon gets in on the fun in A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas. Lennon, best known for "Reno 911," plays Harold's straight-laced suburban best friend Todd. Poor Todd and his baby daughter Ava get dragged into H & K's adventure and what happens to little Ava will have many parents in the audience either rolling with laughter or asking for their money back at the box office.

I can't stress this enough, if you are offended by drugs, sex, violence, racial humor and such, you don't want to attempt to watch "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas." This movie presses the most offensive hot buttons and does not let up for more than 90 minutes. A particularly offensive and completely hilarious scene involves paying homage to the holiday classic "A Christmas Story" in a way that you must see to believe. There is also a reference to "Annie Hall" involving the baby girl Ava that is startlingly funny.

"A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" is up there with "Bridesmaids" as one of the funniest movies of 2011. I completely loved this movie and I cannot recommend it for any audience. The film is so outlandish and so very, very, very R-rated that only a select audience will be able to tolerate the well beyond risqué humor. How "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" did not get saddled with an NC-17 rating is beyond me; the film definitely is offensive enough to deserve it. If you are not easily offended, you are going to love "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas."

Movie Review: Epic Movie

Epic Movie (2007) 

Directed by Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer 

Written by Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer 

Starring Kal Penn, Adam Campbell, Jennifer Coolidge, Jayma Mayes, Crispin Glover 

Release Date January 26th, 2007

Published January 27th, 2007

One movie parody after the next gets worse and worse. Further and further the movies spawned by the success of Scary Movie go from humorous parody to a patchwork of drunken movie karaoke where actors stumble about plots from some of our favorite movies of the decade; missing the beats and never finding the rhythm.

Date Movie was thought to be the nadir of this genre. Sadly, two of the producers of Scary Movie managed to lower the depths and make a movie parody even worse. Epic Movie is an example of how you can dig to the bottom of the barrel and still go lower, if you just lift up the barrel and keep digging, straight to the sewer.

Epic Movie charts an unusual course. Four characters are each initially trapped in their own parody. Edward (Kal Penn) is trapped in a dull facsimile of the orphanage from Nacho Libre, a good movie that really stretches the definition of an 'epic movie'. Peter (Adam Campbell) is locked in the school for mutants from the X-Men movies. Lucy (Jayma Mayes) is escaping a knockoff of The Da Vinci Code and Susan (Faune A. Chambers) is stuck with a parody of Snakes On A Plane.

I say parody only because there is nothing else to call these scenes. Parody, unfortunately, implies that these scenes have a humorous sense about them. They do not. The "parody" of Epic Movie simply calls for the re-enactment of scenes from popular films augmented by bathroom humor, crotch kicking and dull slapstick.

Eventually, these four characters find each other in a Willy Wonka knock-off that leads to a Chronicles of Narnia knock-off and bad copies of Pirates of the Carribean, Borat and the MTV shows Punk'd and Cribs which were timely in, say; 2005. That is one of a myriad of problems with movies like Epic Movie. Our culture moves so quickly that often by the time they are able to finish these cheap reprises, the culture has already moved on to other things. The cribs satire is especially forgetting and tortured.

The comedy of Epic Movie is non-existent, unless you take pleasure in watching likable actors pissing their careers away. Kal Penn, so likable in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, is Epic Movie's biggest victim. With his role on TV's 24 and what I'm sure he hopes is his breakthrough as a dramatic actor in Mira Nair's upcoming The Namesake coming later this year, Penn looked set for stardom. However, after watching him piss down his leg in Epic Movie, how can I possibly take him seriously.

Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge and David Carradine all get caught up in the slime of picking up a paycheck for this awful mess of a movie. These terrific actors don't embarrass themselves to degrees that will matter but they should not highlight this one on their resume. Crispin Glover and Darrell Hammond are lucky that they are buried under pounds of makeup for their roles, leaving them almost unrecognizable. For their sake I will leave their parody identities out of this review.

It's difficult to describe just how bad Epic Movie is. I could easily claim that the film is an early candidate for worst movie of the year but, god help me, I hope I don't remember this movie that long. What is worse is that I know the film will do well enough at the box office that yet another should follow this time next year like some kind of annual curse.

At least by then maybe the stench of Epic Movie will have waned.

Movie Review Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) 

Directed Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Written by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Rob Corddry, Neil Patrick Harris

Release Date April 25th, 2008

Published April 25th, 2008

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle was a harmless little stoner comedy with two likable if not all that well known stars. That same description still fits as Harold and Kumar get sequelized in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. John Cho and Kal Penn are becoming better known and they have a lovable chemistry but saddled with gags that likely will not age well in the years to come, they come up short in Escape from Guantanamo Bay. 

Picking up where the original film left off, Harold and Kumar are just an hour away from boarding a flight to Amsterdam where Harold (John Cho) hopes to win the heart of Maria (Paula Garces). Kumar is supporting his buddy but the opportunity for some legalized weed smoking in the sin capital of Europe holds just as much appeal for him.

Unfortunately for Harold, Kumar cannot wait to get to Amsterdam before he gets high again. Fashioning a device he claims is a smokeless bong, Kumar intends to get high in the airplane bathroom when his bong is glimpsed by another passenger and he is mistaken as a terrorist with a bomb. Coming to his aid, Harold too is called a terrorist and the plane is sent home so our heroes can be arrested.

Confronted by an overzealous homeland security agent (Rob Corddry), Harold and Kumar wind up at the terrorist holding facility at Guantanamo Bay desperate to escape. They hope to reach Texas where a well connected friend might get them out of trouble. That friend happens to be marrying Kumar's ex Vanessa (Daneel Harris) adding some tension to the situation.

That plot gives Harold and Kumar a little motivation. The crux of Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay however is lowbrow gross out humor (two characters get peed on, amongst other gross out gags), a whole lot of drug humor, and some daring if clumsy racial humor. Race played a small but pivotal role in the original film as H & K faced off with a number of racists and stereotypes.

In Escape From Guantanamo Bay the racial component of the story becomes far more prominent. Kumar's skin color gets him pulled out line for extra security checks at the airport. On the plane an old woman is horrified to be on the flight with Kumar, imagining him as a terrorist. Finally, Rob Corddry's Homeland Security agent engages in every imaginable stereotype as he investigates Harold and Kumar's escape.

Equal opportunity offenders, Harold and Kumar themselves judge books by their cover especially in a detour through Alabama and an encounter with a backwoods resident with a number of surprises in store. As I said, the racial humor of Harold and Kumar is clumsy at best. It has the wit of one of those drunken college parties meant to protest political correctness but is really just mildly racist.

Most damaging however is that Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is not nearly as funny as it thinks it is. Many scenes show Harold and Kumar and their supporting cast delighting in their antics to a degree of joy and humor well beyond anything the audience is feeling. I'm glad they had a good time, I just wish I had had a better time watching.

Movie Review Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) 

Directed by Danny Leiner

Written by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Ryan Reynolds, Anthony Anderson, Malin Akerman

Release Date July 30th, 2004 

Published July 29th, 2004 

I can’t be the only one for whom the words “From the Director of Dude Where’s My Car” are not reassuring. That said, you can’t judge a filmmaker by his only film. Director Danny Leiner deserves a chance to make a second impression. However, when I heard that his Dude follow-up was called Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, I was less than enthusiastic. From the depths of low expectations can spring something amazing and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle is amazing for the fact that it doesn’t suck.

Harold and Kumar are your typically mismatched pair of lifelong friends. Harold (John Cho) is a neurotic investment banker who is constantly put upon by his co-workers. Kumar (Kal Penn) has a high IQ and the test scores to go to any med school in the country, but he’d rather live off of his dad’s money and smoke some weed.

Well Harold and Kumar have that in common, they both smoke weed and when a White Castle commercial pops up on television they know exactly where to cure the munchies that accompany smoking the chronic. Kumar thinks he knows where the closest White Castle is but you know this is a buddy comedy road movie so this will not be that easy.

On the way to White Castle, Harold and Kumar encounter a group of skinhead extreme sports guys, a backwoods hick with a taste for group sex, an escaped leopard, racist cops and Neil Patrick Harris. Yes, that Neil Patrick Harris in the best of numerous cameos that also include Jaime Kennedy, Anthony Anderson and an unrecognizable Christopher Meloni as the previously mentioned backwoodsman.

The unique thing about Harold and Kumar is the smart satirical way it treats race. Harold is Korean, Kumar is Indian, but neither is defined by their ethnicity. They face racism at every turn and eventually they fight back in funny anarchic fashion, stealing cars, breaking into and out of prison, riding a leopard (see it for yourself).

Cho and Penn are a pair of terrific comic actors. Great chemistry, timing and charm. These two are really likable and you can’t help but cheer for them every humiliating, degrading step of the way. The few scenes they share with Neil Patrick Harris in a cameo as himself are absolutely hysterical. We have seen this type of career send up before, The Simpsons are famous for tweaking an actor’s past persona for ironic laughs, this time it’s somehow fresh and smart. That is because Harris is so committed and Cho and Penn sell the jokes so well.

Director Danny Leiner still has a way to go before we start praising his technique but this is unquestionably an improvement over Dude Where’s My Car. Of course, ninety minutes of blank screen would be an improvement over that film, but I’m trying to pay the guy a compliment. Harold and Kumar is a stoner comedy with all the stoner comedy beats and expected jokes. It’s juvenile and wades into the muck of gross out humor that genre does best.

Harold and Kumar would be valuable for just providing the rare starring role for a Korean guy and an Indian guy. It transcends that because those guys are actually very funny.

Movie Review Love Don't Cost a Thing

Love Don't Cost A Thing (2003) 

Directed by Troy Beyer 

Written by Troy Beyer 

Starring Nick Cannon, Christina Milian, Steve Harvey, Kenan Thompson, Kal Penn

Release Date December 12th, 2003 

Published December 12th, 2003  

Of all of the movies that I thought deserved another take, the dopey Patrick Dempsey teen comedy Can’t Buy Me Love never occurred to me. Despite being an iconic 80’s film for many, to me its a slight comedy about a nerd who buys his way into high school popularity had overtones of outright prostitution. I would have preferred to welcome its fall into 80’s obscurity. The ever unoriginal Hollywood swill factory however disagreed with my assessment and thus we have Love Don’t Cost A Thing, a cynical “urban” (read black) take on the story.

Nick Cannon, star of last year’s drumming drama Drumline, stars as Alvin Johnson. Alvin is a high school nerd who spends his time with his nerdy friends rebuilding cars and dreaming of what it would be like to have access to the popular kid’s hallway of their high school. Yes, the high school has a hallway where the rich, popular bullies and their hot girlfriends are separated from the rabble, indicating that even the high school teachers are in on this anti-nerd conspiracy.

Alvin’s dream girl is a popular cheerleader named Paris Morgan (Christina Milian) whose current boyfriend is an NBA star who jumped directly from high school to the NBA. Paris has no occasion to ever speak to Alvin until one night when she borrows her mother’s car and crashes it while arguing on the phone with her boyfriend. While getting the car looked at Paris finds that her mother will find out about the accident unless the car is fixed immediately. Enter Alvin with his car expertise and just enough of his own money to pay for the parts. In exchange for fixing the car, Paris will be Alvin’s girl and in the process help him become popular.

What a shock it is then when the plan succeeds and popularity goes to young Alvin’s head. Alvin drops his nerdy friends, begins wearing trendy clothes and a new hairstyle and before long, Alvin surpasses Paris in his high school stature. Do you think he has a comeuppance in his future? For his part, Nick Cannon affects a nerdy black kid better than I expected. That said, the part as written has him changing rather unconvincingly from Urkel to Puff Daddy and only the Urkel part works. Cannon is a charisma-challenged actor who has yet to show a spark of the stardom that has seemed thrust upon him in the past year since the debut of his Nickelodeon kids show in 2002.

Pop starlet Christina Milian equates herself better than expected, though expectations place her just ahead of Britney Spears on the pop-tart-turned-actress-chart well behind the far more accomplished Mandy Moore. The part as written by director Troy Miller affects depth by having Paris write bad poetry and play the guitar. She also bemoans popularity as a job rather than a mere social status, an interesting idea that goes nowhere.

Director Troy Beyer adapted the screenplay of Can’t Buy Me Love, written by Michael Swerdlick. The word adaptation is used loosely. She essentially just traces within the lines of the original film, changing only minor plot points and the ethnicity of the characters.

Therein lies the most insidious problem of the film. The retrofitting of this unoriginal idea for African American audiences is a sad cynical attempt to capitalize on the paucity of films with African-American lead characters. Because there are so few films with black, lead characters, African-American audiences are prone to support any film that features a black face. This has caused Hollywood’s cynical mass marketing machine to continue to limit opportunities for African-Americans in order to maintain them as a niche market. Assuming they are willing to accept cheap, easy to market trash like Love Don’t Cost A Thing at the expense of more challenging, artistic films with African-American lead casts.

Such cynicism is nothing new from Hollywood but when it deals with race, it becomes far more serious. A film as slight as Love Don’t Cost A Thing doesn’t have any kind of social agenda in its creation. Rather, it has one thrust upon it because there are so few films with predominantly African American casts and even fewer good ones. That is not due to a lack of talented African-American filmmakers but rather due to cheap knock offs and shortsighted money grubbing of the kind that creates movies like Love Don't Cost A Thing. 

Movie Review National Lampoon's Van Wilder

National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002) 

Directed by Walt Becker

Written by Brent Goldberg

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Tim Matheson, Todd Black, Tara Reid, Simon Helberg, Aaron Paul, Kal Penn, Tom Everett Scott

Release Date April 5th, 2002 

Published April 4th, 2002 

Another college comedy, how original, I mean we haven't seen that in what, a week? 2 weeks? Oh, but this college comedy is from National Lampoon, the people behind Chevy Chase's career meltdown and a long list of tremendously unfunny comedies. Save for the 1977 masterpiece Animal House ironically also a college based comedy.

Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds) is the big man on campus at fictional Coolidge College and has been for 7 years. Unfortunately for Van, his father (Animal House star Tim Matheson) is no longer willing to pay for his tuition. This means Van and his wacky sidekicks must find a way to pay for Van to stay. This leads to plots, schemes, parties, topless girls and drunken mayhem, as if you could make a college comedy without those things. The film, having covered the college comedy requirements, now must add a love interest and a nemesis. Enter Tara Reid as a journalism major doing a story on Van and her evil frat-guy boyfriend (Todd Black).

I have spent the better part of this review running this movie down when in actuality there was a lot about it I liked. The film’s star, Ryan Reynolds, is amazingly charismatic with impeccable comic timing and a unique way of delivering a line. Even if what he's saying isn't meant to be funny it still makes you smile. Tara Reid may not be the most believable journalism major but as the subject of every man's lust she perfectly fits the bill.

In the legend and lore of college comedy, Animal House and the little seen PCU run as the best of the genre, and the recent Sorority Boys, falls as the absolute worst. I would say Van Wilder falls somewhere in the middle with Rodney Dangerfield's Back To School. It's not great but it's not horribly unwatchable. On a side note, Van Wilder is not for the squeamish. A scene with a character masturbating a dog is rather disgusting but its aftermath may drive some of you out of the theater.

Is Van Wilder worth seeing? Yes, but wait for the DVD, which will likely come within the next 3 or 4 months.