HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE.

US, 2004, 83 minutes, Colour.
John Cho, Kal Penn, Fred Willard, Paula Garces, David Krumholz, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Neal Patrick Harris, Anthony Anderson, Christopher Meloni, Mila Kunis, Ethan Embry.
Directed by Danny Leiner.

Harold and Kumar are characters in two films, they go to the White Castle takeaway and they go to Guantánamo. The two characters were played by John Cho and Kal Penn, the former an accountant working conscientiously in an office, the latter trying to break through Indian stereotypes and not wanting to follow his doctor father into his profession.

The films have become something off cult entertainments, “Stoner Films”. There are quite a lot of drugs throughout the film, recreational drugs for Harold and Kumar, at home with marijuana, dealers, trying to get stashes from hospitals…

It is the weekend, Harold has been given extra work by his two bosses who go off on a trip of their own – with some comeuppance from Harold at the end. We see glimpses of the life of the two in the apartment, their going on the road, Harold and his shyness with Maria who lives in the apartment block, Kumar and his extroversion.

The film become something of a road movie, with a range of adventures including seeing gangs beating up young people, a visit to Harold’s Korean friends and sitting with them but later going to see them perform in a club, going to hospital where Kumar has to step in and is successful in his surgery (with Ryan Reynolds as the orderly), their encounter with an odd-bod truckie (Christopher Maloney) and his attractively permissive wife (Mila Kunis). They also crash the car and get the lift from the truckie.

They finally arrive at White Castle to indulge their cravings for big burgers.

This was the kind of stoner film that was popular in the first decade of the 21st century, lots of drug episodes and jokes, sexual references, coarse bodily function jokes – that were to become part of this kind of raucous comedy.