Kal Penn (left) as “Kumar” and John Cho (right) as “Harold”
Raj S. Rangarajan
NEW YORK: If its summer, its movie time. For some reason the bar seems to be set lower for a comedy, more so if it is released in July-August. Perhaps, it has to do with the general warmth of the season and bonhomie among people - election year and the Iraq war notwithstanding.
A breezy film - Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (87 mins.) - is packed with frolic and fun and attempts to entertain and succeeds most of the time. Being a comic is specially tough in today’s times but two Asian comics – one of Korean origin (John Cho, born Seoul, Korea) and the other Kal Penn of Indian parentage (born Montclair, New Jersey) - perform admirably. All these two guys are looking for is instant gratification: a White Castle hamburger on a Friday evening (Note: not available everywhere, may not be available near you!) and the situations this pair of Harold (Cho) and Kumar (Penn) get into are bizzare, funny and wild: straight out of the escapist’s Hall of Fame, if there is one.
We have to pardon the occasional overacting by the two - a prerequisite for this genre of movie. The language is raunchy but unnecessarily saucy at times though one realizes that smart comebacks among the young constitute the lingua franca of that generation. Harold and Kumar crave for a hamburger known for its unique steam-grilled taste and the film narrates goings-on in one evening ranging from meeting a nocturnal mammal – the raccoon and a cheetah in separate incidents to a skymobile trip around town. You have the nerdy image of a hard-working Korean, Harold intent on completing his projects on time including ones that are dumped on him, and of Kumar, a doctor in the making who’s not particularly interested in medicine, but who, in a moment of introspection, realizes becoming a doctor is a good career move. Stage actor Errol Sitahal who appeared in the play Bhopal in Toronto last November plays Kumar’s father, another doctor at a hospital in New Jersey.
Cho (American Pie trilogy) and Penn (Malibu’s Most Wanted), who were named among Hollywood’s “hottest bachelors” by People Magazine recently are joined by Neil Patrick Harris (Tony Award for Broadway’s Assassins) as himself and Eddie Kaye Thomas (American Pie), a neighbor of the comics, another known face.
New Jersey’s toll collectors and cops get their share of exposure through cameos but the Garden state’s upholders of the law are shown in less flattering light. One would like to believe that the film’s creators were not getting back at the cops after a couple of racially-motivated incidents on the New Jersey turnpike. Suddenly, beating on cops seems to be fashionably par for the course.
A satirical cameo of accomplished stage and screen actor Harris that the audience will warm up to is Harris appearing as himself, when he steals Harold’s car with an open top and later appears with a topless female.
On a serious note, the writers attempt at exploring racial stereotypes while portraying the story as a tale of two friends forced to face reality by virtue of what they are in America today. Director Danny Leiner has managed to handle the race issue head on while giving it an aura of comic release through goofy Asian characters out for a late-night burger. Leiner says, “Harold and Kumar are sweet characters you want to pull for.” After the hit comedy Where’s My Car? Director Danny Leiner gives us H & K go to W.C. and writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg have done justice to a weak story.
It is rated “R” because of the sexual content and not because of crude humor that jars at times. Whether these scenes will actually help Harold & Kumar at the box office is anybody’s guess. But some may prefer to wait for the DVD since the movie is not that compelling. With South Asians now coming into their own and with more films of this genre such as American Pie succeeding, younger folk may indeed decide to see the flick.
If the Cho-Penn shtick is indeed accepted we could expect the duo write their own billing like Cheech and Chong or Abbott and Costello and even Laurel and Hardy did.
[Photo Credit: ©2004 Sophie Giraud/New Line Productions]
[Raj S. Rangarajan is a New York based freelance writer. He covers trend stories on art, travel and lifestyles and reviews books, films and plays for media based in New York, California, Toronto, India and Australia.]
