Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle is, at turns, a raucously adolescent pursuit of hedonistic pleasures as well as a brilliantly acerbic satire on the state of race relations and an entire generation and race’s sense of entitlement in contemporary America. It is also, at turns, one helluva mess and one helluva of a funny movie.
John Cho (Better Luck Tomorrow, American Pie) is well-cast as the uptight, nerdy and meek investment banker Harold, who is constantly taken advantage of by his (Caucasian) colleagues. Kal Penn (Van Wilder) gives a breakout performance in the plum role of the brilliant, outgoing slacker Kumar, who is determined to avoid becoming his father and brother by evading attending medical school by any other means necessary. Cho and Penn play off each other with the sort of comfortable ease and crackerjack comic timing that you would only expect to find in seasoned duos. When Harold and Kumar get ripped and hit the road in search of the Great American Burger, the chemistry of the leads, as well as the motif of travel, at first reminded me in a most curious way of the Hope/Crosby road pictures, but they are also tripping more clearly in the bong-toting spirit of Cheech and Chong.
Now this is hardly a perfect film, but such is the nature of such episodic comedy fare, where I’m generally content if more than half of the skit-like scenes have a decent payoff. So, while I could do without the toilet scene and the animatronic racoon and the CGI cheetah, when you get past this inferior material, you find a movie that is funny far more often than it flops, and one that – more importantly – challenges the Myth of the American Melting Pot. Throughout the film, Harold and Kumar, as well as any other people of colour, are treated openly as second (or third) class citizens who should be thankful that they’re even allowed to breath freely of good old American air. The film is a pretty pointed commentary about the whole sense of Anglo/Caucasian entitlement that often forces those outside this inner circle to harbour bleak prospects when pursuing their little bit of happiness or searching for their fair share of the American Dream. The humiliation and degradation heaped on Harold and Kumar in their long day’s journey into night is all part of the process of proving themselves greater than their adversaries, while also providing the film with its payoff when they finally get to (metaphorically) kick some dumb whitey ass. The burger joint White Castle is Harold and Kumar’s grail, and the lads will not settle for anything but the best burgers available. Their quest for this perfect burger symbolizes nothing less than the immigrant’s desire to have equal access to the corridors of power in America. Leiner’s film is a celebration of the rights of all people from all races, creeds and beliefs to have equal access to the best-damned burger Americans can fry up!
I confess that I am one of three critics in the known universe who really dug the way Dude, Where’s My Car? lovingly depicted stoner culture, and now here we have the same director (Danny Leiner) giving it up for more of life’s marginalized heroes. So, this is a clear caveat before I declare my adoration of Leiner’s oeuvre, and I admit to getting that tingly sensation of falling in love with a director’s vision. Now, if I can only convince him to get rid of the fake animal shtick.
