Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Reviews Counted: 132
Fresh: 70 | Rotten: 62
It may not equal its predecessor, but Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is still good for some laughs -- and food for thought.
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 14
It may not equal its predecessor, but Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is still good for some laughs -- and food for thought.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 352,512
Movie Info
After successfully seeking out the ultimate slider in the 2004 stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, the cannabis-craving twosome returns in this high-flying sequel that finds them labeled terrorists for attempting to sneak a marijuana-smoking implement on a flight to Amsterdam. Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) have just finished gorging themselves on savory White Castle hamburgers when they return to their apartment and hatch a plan for Harold to win the heart of his crush,
Watch It Now
Cast
-
John Cho
Harold -
Kal Penn
Kumar -
Rob Corddry
Ron Fox -
Jack Conley
Deputy Frye -
Roger Bart
Dr. Beecher -
Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris -
Danneel Harris
Vanessa -
Eric Winter
Colton -
Paula Garcés
Maria -
Jon Reep
Raymus -
Missi Pyle
Raylene -
-
Mark Munoz
Cyrus -
James Adomian
George W. Bush -
Beverly D'Angelo
Sally -
Echo Valley
Tits Hemingway -
David Krumholtz
Goldstein -
Eddie Kaye Thomas
Rosenberg -
ADVERTISEMENT
All Critics (133) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (70) | Rotten (62) | DVD (8)
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay, a loosely strung-together collection of sex, race, and stoner jokes, is, by any rational standard, a terrible movie, yet I kept laughing at it, and I came out of the theatre in a good mood.
Top CriticA fitfully funny if somewhat less excellent sequel.
As much as I enjoyed the pot-fueled laughs and the sheer energetic lunacy of the original, I was really let down by this uninspired sequel.
The jokes all revolve around weed, stereotypes, and Neil Patrick Harris; the stereotype stuff is by far the funniest.
A guilty pleasure that retains the anarchic charms of the original.
This is one of those rare pictures that can gross you out and make you think at one and the same time.
A bag of shoddy skits that barely qualifies as a movie and taints pleasant memories of their previous clowning besides
As the idea is no longer fresh and the plot has basically the same structure, it doesn't quite match the original. But the sequel delivers enough new developments to keep it interesting.
For a stoner comedy, it makes some lucid points.
Just make sure that you're really stoned when you see it.
Every aspect of the production is atrocious in the extreme.The writing is awful. The direction is bilious.
The film is so even-handed and so diligent in its urge to offend that after a while I felt myself go numb.
Amid the dick jokes, drug taking and gratuitous nudity, the film also serves as a salient reminder about what actually ranks as subversive comedy.
Hurwitz and Schlossberg can't quite recapture their magic in this spotty stoner sequel.
There's an abundance of toilet humour, masturbation, oral sex and fantasies about threesomes with an oversized bag of weed ... The target market will no doubt be primed
Uses its sly brand of humor to say plenty about the state of race relations in the U.S. (really).
Now only a pot comedy would conceive of turning George W. into a goofy, dare I say even likable pothead who's afraid of his dad and Dick Cheney.
While not without its funny moments, this labored sequel ups the nudity and gross-out factor while diminishing the sweetness and evident camaraderie of its appealing leads.
Anything the filmmakers might have, could have, should have handled with even the remotest degree of subtlety...they didn't.
A prison sex slave rebellion having to do with an organ sandwich, don't ask, and a detour over to Bush's secret sex den, make this ballsy doper duo and their Blue State versus Red State rant hard to resist.
Whereas White Castle had a freshness in its humor, Guantanamo goes crude for the sake of crudeness, to the point of ruining entire scenes.
A drunken bachelor party kind of movie, more of a rental idea than a full-priced theater movie.
Those wishing to defend the honor of the red states will find much to dislike here, starting with the depiction of Southerners as rednecks and Klansmen
Unfortunately, the movie has too many uninspired and shockingly unfunny moments that outweigh the good by at least a few tons.
A surprisingly 'post-9/11' movie, it combines typical stoner humor with a plot about ethnic profiling, torture, and War on Terror paranoia. But, like, in a funny way.
...even Doogie Howser and his imaginary unicorns can't save this film.
Audience Reviews for Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Super Reviewer
This is a very stupid, vulgar, and predictable comedy, with some lame romantic comedy cliches and attempts at political satire, but you know what? It has some very funny moments. As a movie its not as good as the first one, but it certainly has more memorable moments (Emo Harold).
Much of the problem comes from whats been done to this film in relation to how the first one did things. This film certainly expands its scope to make it more of an epic stoner comedy, but much of the charm in the first film came from the relevant insight handled in a funny and appropriate manner. Here, the film basically works as a live action version of South Park in many scenes.
Still, it's hard not to laugh at what is going on in this movie. It also helps that Neil Patrick Harris is hilarious every step of the way for his amount of screen time. Rob Cordry goes out on a limb to make is character so stupid-goofy-racist that it works. And then there's a terrible Bush impersonator who actual makes it through to being fairly funny.
So much is pushed into this film that a good chunk of it sticks, therefore making it an acceptable comedy, which I laughed at a lot, even if I don't have the desire to go and see it again.
Chloe: You remember that time you stole that monkey and put it in Rosenberg's dorm room?
Kumar: Had I known that the monkey had AIDS I never would have done that.
Super Reviewer
-
- Kumar: Dude this is weed.
- George W. Bush: That's alabama kush, thats one of the finest.
- Kumar: So you get high then you put other people who smoke weed in jail.
- George W. Bush: Duh.
- Kumar: That's so hypocritical.
- George W. Bush: Oh yeah well let me ask you something kumar, you like giving hand jobs.
- Kumar: No sir.
- George W. Bush: You like getting hand jobs.
- Kumar: Yeah.
- George W. Bush: Well that makes you a fuckin hypacriticizer to, so shut the fuck up and smoke my weed.
-
- Ron Fox: Let me ask you something. Have you ever been ice fishing before?
- Deputy Frye: No sir, no I haven't.
- Ron Fox: Well it's fucking exhilarating.
-
- Ron Fox: [upon seeing Harold] What's up with the guy with the weird eyes? He handicapped or something?
- Deputy Frye: We believe he's of Korean decent.
-
- Ron Fox: My God, North Korea and Al Qaeda working together. This is bigger than I thought.
-
- Kumar: You fucking pissed on me you racist fuck!
-
- Ron Fox: Tell them that in your fake ching-chong language.
Discussion Forum
There are no discussion threads for Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay yet.
What's Hot On RT
Pictures from a zombie nation
Woody Allen in San Francisco
See the Desolation of Smaug trailer!
Where does This Is the End rank?
Latest News on Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
May 7, 2009:
Warners Plots Harold and Kumar, Happy Feet SequelsWarner Bros. has announced a pair of very different features in development: "A Very Harold & Kumar...
July 28, 2008:
RT on DVD: Harold & Kumar, Doomsday and Dark City Director's CutSince we're all still recovering from Comic-Con 2008, and tons of new home video details dropped at...
July 25, 2008:
Weekly Ketchup: Anchorman 2, Dracula: Year Zero, Twilight Zone and Much MoreIn this week's Weekly Ketchup we've got the latest on plenty of remakes and sequels coming your way....
Fresh Links
Featured
Movie: ID: 770672311 Title: Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay Release Date: 2008-04-24 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 4 Status: 1
The Looks of Johnny Depp
To celebrate the star's birthday, BuzzSugar looks at the many faces of Johnny Depp.
10 Egregious Product Placements
Rolling Stone wonders if The Internship goes too far... then provides 10 examples of movies that did.
Horror Movie Mistakes
Moviefone offers up 8 of the most obvious glaring errors in popular fright flicks.
10 Bad Movies That Look Great
Sometimes even terrible movies can be beautiful; here are 10 of them, from HitFix.
50 Most Classic Movie Moms
In celebration of Mother's Day, TimeOut offers up 50 iconic matriarchs from the big screen.
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter!
Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
Featured on RT
- In Pictures: Zombie Nation! 0
- Video Interviews with Cast & Crew of Monsters University 0
- Digital Multiplex: 21 & Over, Quartet, and More 2
- RT on DVD & Blu-Ray: Jack the Giant Slayer and Quartet 23
- Box Office Guru Wrapup: Man of Steel Sets June Record 101
- Weekly Ketchup: Man of Steel Sequel In the Works 198
- Five Favorite Films with Joss Whedon 128
Top Headlines
Foreign Titles
- Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (DE)
- Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (UK)
What hurts the movie the most, for me, is that it's a really big retread of the first, but this time they take the shock humor to some extreme and sometimes really offensive levels. Some of it does work, some doesn't, but it is overkill regardless. I still give it a lot of credit however because it does tackle some actual issues, even if it mostly prefers to focus on the dumb humor.