Film Review: Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay 7|8
Written and directed by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Starring John Cho, Kal Penn
Comedy, 2008. 102 minutes.
This film follows on the heels of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), a slapstick comedy about two pot smoking twenty-somethings searching for adventure and good times in New Jersey. Escape from Guantánamo Bay picks up ten minutes after the first film ends as the two friends decide to travel Amsterdam to find Harold’s new flame. Their plan quickly goes awry when Kumar is unable to resist lighting up his bong in the bathroom of the airplane and the two are arrested as terrorists. They embark on an international adventure full of raunchy highjinx, screwball antics, and all the rest.
Go to White Castle broke new ground in American cinema by featuring Korean-American and Indian-American main characters. Escape from Guantánamo Bay pushes a whole lot further. What matters about this fiction is that it brings human rights issues into mainstream discourse - in a very funny way.
Read the full review here.
