Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay sounds like a plot summary, but the titular escape actually happens at the beginning of the movie. The rest of the flick lurches between random sketches like a Broken Lizard movie, delighting in its transgressions. This movie is off the charts on gross-out and gratuitousness. There’s the epic shit joke made famous by Jeff Daniels. There’s a Kumar cvm shot, made of something lumpy so you know it’s not real. (This isn’t English, August, with its merely implied fapping.) There are acres of tanned, plastic Barbie-doll vajayjay and and pubes, setting back Sarah Marshall’s progress. Amir Talai as Raza Syed wears a codpiece which looks like a Hendrix fro with a little muppet arm hanging out. If Mira Nair worried about casting Penn before this flick, she’ll probably be throwing down Crown Royal shots after.

Inevitably, the sequel is not as funny or fresh as the original. The novelty of seeing a desi playing a desi has worn off a bit. It’s also more loosely scripted. The original had a unifying theme, an all-night quest for tasty, tasty sliders. Its successor takes disjointed potshots at racism, but sometimes plays stereotypes for humor without either condemning them or crossing into good parody. Dangerous black people, redneck Southerners and Jews salivating at the sound of pennies — the stereotypes are criticized, but sotto voce. This is cringe comedy, like a big screen Office.

But the flick has its moments, most of which are in the trailer. As a friend wrote:

… it has a wide range of humor, ranging from total gross-out… to clever sight gag… to political (all the scenes with Rob Corddry), to verbal (my favorite line is when the terrorists in Gitmo are talking about how Americans… are going to suffer… and Kumar yells [a very funny non sequitur]).

I won’t give away the line, but the movie soon downshifts into a ‘c0ck meat sandwich.’

The filmmakers play off the odd couple against each other like Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble — Kumar the crude stoner, Harold the uptight romantic. Kal Penn has the more cro-Magnon features. Kumar cries racism at airport security to sneak a bag of weed on board an airplane, tucked safely beneath his balls. He storms the white castle of Southern aristocracy by taking his girlfriend back from an Abercrombie-wearing douchebag. The situation actually recalls Gogol and Jacinda Barrett writhing in bed.

Rob Corddry and Ed Helms do a Daily Show-style sketch, but you’ll have seen the best lines before entering the theater. Neil Patrick Harris rides a unicorn with traditional Indian music playing in the background. For all the movie’s condemnation of post-9/11 paranoia, the character who gets the most sympathetic portrayal is a pot-smoking Dubya, egged on by Kumar to take another hit and kiss off his father.

My favorite bit was a visual gag: Kumar and his girlfriend are snogging, and Harold walks in. He’s dressed like a Cure fan, stark raving goth. There’s also a snippet of poetry which brought a tear to my eye.

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