Review in a Hurry: Weed! If you laughed at that, you'll love this uneven sequel to the 2004 buddy comedy, which costars John Cho, Kal Penn, Rob Corddry, Neil Patrick Harris and a giant bag of Jamaican High Grade.
The Bigger Picture: Harold and Kumar, those crazy slacker buddies who fight bigotry armed with nothing but cannabis and the munchies, are back. This time, instead of chasing burgers, they're fleeing the Department of Homeland Security, which has branded our heroes as terrorists after they smuggled a high-tech bong onto a plane. The bong looked like a bomb, see, and the two words sound really similar, and the guys aren't white, so off to prison they go.
The two brainy young men—Harold is in investment banking; Kumar has a future as a doctor—manage to escape in about three seconds, but the rest of the plot, and some of their decisions, seem inexplicably dumbed down. (Didn't either of these sharp young men ever smoke out with a law student or two back in the dorms? They don't seem to know any attorneys, only models and wealthy Miami playboys.)
Even the movie's main theme—fighting racial stereotypes—trips up as soon as Harold and Kumar's nebbish Jewish neighbors get dragged in for questioning, with David Krumholtz and Eddie Kaye Thomas letting loose in accents reminiscent of a borscht-belt revival of Fiddler on the Roof.
Harris returns as a heightened, fictional—and still straight—version of himself, chasing hookers with a branding iron and munching on psychotropic mushrooms. It was fresh the first time.
The 180—a Second Opinion: Only popcorn, chocolate and soda were available at the theater, so maybe we just had the wrong chemicals in our system when we saw this.