Review: 'Harold & Kumar' Sequel Takes No Prisoners

Take "Cheech and Chong," pair it with the "Odd Couple" and throw in "National Lampoon's Vacation" and "Superbad," and you have "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay."

There's nothing new in the film's gross-out comedy department, but there's plenty of freshness when it comes to taking on contemporary issues. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, who wrote and directed the film, as well as "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle," take no prisoners.

Where "White Castle" was virtually plotless with the best buddies getting high and getting the munchies, this Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) movie has a plot, theme and somewhat of a message. The script skewers everything from the war on terror, incestuous Southern relations and the Klu Klux Klan to President George W. Bush and every stereotype imaginable.

Neil Patrick Harris of "Doogie Howser" fame, who appeared in the first film, roasts himself as a whacked out has-been on hallucinogenics with a penchant for branding his initials on the backsides of prostitutes.

The toilet humor is more than plentiful in the sequel. The gross-outs start flowing right off the top with the opening scene showing Kumar relieving himself on the toilet after downing too many burgers (White Castle, of course), while he interrupts Harold's shower fantasy of his dream woman.

After the bathroom episode, the two pack for a trip to Amsterdam to find the love of Harold's life, and a Kumar dream to come true: the chance to smoke endless amounts of legal marijuana. The trip gets off to a rocky start when Kumar is racially profiled at airport security, then wages a verbal war with the TSA inspector.

After the two board the plane, another Harold bathroom excursion is interrupted as Kumar decides he can't wait for Amsterdam and loads a smokeless pipe he's smuggled onboard full of pot.

Pounced on by air marshals who believe the bong is a bomb, and the pair are terrorists, they are sentenced to serve time in Guantanamo Bay. After an entirely unlikely escape, they begin a road trip to Texas where the fiancee of Kumar's ex-girlfriend can help clear their names. It's a long way from Guantanamo to Texas, and the boys are in store for some rocky terrain.

Silly and crude, the second film lacks the originality of the first, and repetitive profiling and stereotyping storylines make the film feel longer than the 112 minutes it clocks in at. Yet there isn't a better pair to pull off this sophomoric schlock than Cho and Penn.

Cho plays the perfect sideman to Penn's hapless ringleader. Supported by Rob Corddry as a perfectly over-the-top racist, "Top Gun" government agent, and a dead-ringer pot-smoking commander-in chief played by James Adomian, the movie proves that it's high time Hollywood allowed audiences a vehicle to laugh at all that's plaguing America post-9/11.