Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

"Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" was a joyless wisp of a film, a stoner ramble that barely even bothered to make jokes, let alone funny ones. The sequel, "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay," is a major improvement, if not quite a good film.

The film picks up right where the first one left off. Kumar is now on a mission to reach Texas and win back his ex-girlfriend, who is about to marry an upper class twit. Along their journey, he and Harold visit a whorehouse with Neil Patrick Harris (playing a bizarre version of himself, as he did in the first film), smoke pot with President Bush and, yes, escape from Guantanamo Bay.

They wind up there after Kumar boards a plane with a bong, which is mistaken for a bomb. A nitwit Homeland Security official played by Rob Corddry is determined to bring them to justice. Corddry's blatant racism gives the film an opportunity to explore racial profiling. While the jokes here are never subtle, they are effective; Corddry assumes that Harold and Kumar are North Korean and Arab, respectively (he's wrong on both counts) and hires an interpreter to speak to Harold's American-born parents. The film also examines racism in other contexts, observing that stereotypes are often false but sometimes all too true.

Of course, "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" is still filled with flaws. Predictably, the direction is lousy and the acting is overly broad. There are also still some of the bizarre moments that made the first film so awkward, such as a one-eyed inbred boy chasing the heroes through a basement. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, who wrote both films, still need to realize that carnival freak shows are not a good source for comedy. Nonetheless, their sequel is a step in the right direction.