But just when we've wedged them into one stereotype, they wriggle out of it and into another. Harold Lee (John Cho, who has appeared in "American Pie" and its two sequels, although this is his first starring role) is an analyst with a big investment firm Kumar Patel (Kal Penn), his best friend and roommate, is brilliant enough to get into medical school without even trying very hard, but for now, he's more interested in hanging out and getting high.īy day, Harold and Kumar are your stereotypical children of Asian immigrants, bright young men who work hard (or who at least know, deep in their hearts, that someday they will work hard). Without lifting a finger to make its point, "Harold & Kumar" - now out on DVD for those who missed it in theaters - may have said more about race in America today than any other movie of last year. Race is an issue in "Harold & Kumar," but it's not the issue. Even when they're over the top, the gags in "Harold & Kumar" have a kind of Zen garden simplicity - they don't demand brains or logic as much as a willingness to surrender to the corner of your brain that sometimes forgets how to spell words like "accommodate" and "likability." But Leiner ("Dude, Where's My Car?"), working with writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, also seems to be angling toward something bigger, not so much in what he says as in what he doesn't say. "Harold & Kumar" isn't a social issues movie, as "Spanglish" is, and to treat it as one is to diminish the pure pleasure it gives as a work of unabashedly dumb stoner humor. But I didn't know how good it was until I saw James L. When I saw Danny Leiner's "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," I knew it was good.
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