Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

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Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Directed by Danny Leiner
Produced by Greg Shapiro
Written by Jon Hurwitz
Hayden Schlossberg
Starring John Cho
Kal Penn
Distributed by New Line Cinema
Release date(s) July 30, 2004
Running time 88 min
Language English
Budget $9,000,000 (estimated)
Followed by Harold & Kumar 2
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (released in some countries as Harold and Kumar get the Munchies or American High, due to few international White Castle locations) is a comedy movie that was released in 2004. The plot revolves around the two title characters, who decide to go to the fast food restaurant White Castle after smoking marijuana, only to find themselves on a series of misadventures instead.

The film was written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, and directed by Danny Leiner. Starring Kal Penn and John Cho, it also features appearances by Paula Garcés, Anthony Anderson, Dan Bochart, Ethan Embry, Jamie Kennedy, Bobby Lee, Christopher Meloni, Malin Akerman, Ryan Reynolds, Shaun Majumder, David Krumholtz, Eddie Kaye Thomas, and Neil Patrick Harris (who does not play himself, but plays an exaggerated version of himself — on the credits he is not credited as playing "himself" but is credited as playing "Neil Patrick Harris").

The movie was fairly well received by critics[1], and a sequel Harold & Kumar 2 (working title) is currently in the works.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Harold Lee, working at an investment bank, is told to finish some important files over the weekend by two co-workers, who are in fact slacking off in order to party. Meanwhile, his best friend Kumar Patel is being interviewed for medical school. Harold calls him, and Kumar is preoccupied with the conversation, telling Harold that they are going to hang out and smoke marijuana, whether Harold wants to or not. Kumar's interviewer overhears the entire conversation and promptly rejects Kumar from medical school.

Later on, Harold returns to their apartment building, only to receive trouble from a group of guys that hang around in their neighborhood. He goes into the elevator and finds that he is next to Maria, his crush. After enduring an awkward elevator ride, Harold goes to the apartment he and Kumar share. He finds Kumar trimming his pubic hairs with Harold's nose hair scissors. Harold and Kumar smoke weed and get the munchies. After watching television for a while, they see a commercial for White Castle and suddenly have an urge to go there and eat some burgers. They decide to visit a nearby White Castle in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Before leaving, Harold and Kumar visit their two Jewish friends who live down the hall, Rosenberg and Goldstein, the Jewish guys, who decline to join Harold and Kumar because they want to watch The Gift and see Katie Holmes' breasts. While driving on the Garden State Parkway, the toll machine does not accept the coins that Kumar has thrown in. Being harassed by cars behind them, Kumar runs the toll and Harold, paranoid that the cops will pull them over, throws the pair's last joint out of the car. They end up taking a detour through Newark, New Jersey. Harold and Kumar see a pair of young men that look a lot like themselves get beat up. The duo quickly drive back onto the Parkway. Harold and Kumar get there, only to discover the restaurant has been closed. The White Castle has been replaced by another fast-food restaurant, which uses animal semen in its special sauces. Told by an employee that there is another White Castle about 45 minutes away in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, they decide to head there.

They stop at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey and visit Harold's friend, Cyndi Kim, who has Harold be her guest of honor at her East Asian Students Club meeting. Kumar looks for someone to sell him marijuana, eventually buying from a "business hippie," who raises the price of the drug to an unfair level. Kumar sees two British girls, who tell him they'll meet up with him in 20 minutes to smoke some weed. He then runs into Harold, steering him away from Cyndi. They light up a joint in the hallway, but are soon forced run away from campus police, hiding in the girls' bathroom. The two girls enter the bathroom, and Kumar and Harold stand together on a toilet. The boys hear the girls play a game of "Battleshits," where each player has to out-fart the other. Kumar and Harold accidentally drop the weed into the toilet, then run out of the bathroom.

The two head off the road when Kumar has to go into to woods to urinate. A strange man comes up right next to Kumar, and pees next to him. Disturbed, Kumar returns to the car, which, unbeknownst to both Harold and Kumar, now contains a racoon. Harold and Kumar do not notice the raccoon until it attacks Harold. Insisting that he has rabies, Harold makes Kumar drive him to a hospital.

Once there, they attempt to steal medical marijuana. This hospital visit provides an inconvenient meeting with Kumar's father and brother, both of whom are disgruntled to see again that Kumar is straying away from the medical profession. Kumar apologizes to them and gives them a hug. What Kumar is actually doing is taking an access card from them and plans to use it to get marijuana. While looking for marijuana, the two are mistaken for doctors and forced into an operating room to perform surgery on a wounded man. After a failed attempt to convince the nurse that marijuana is needed to sedate the patient, Kumar performs flawless surgery on the patient. After the patient is revived, Kumar asks him directions to the nearest White Castle.

Harold and Kumar see Maria outside a movie theater. While Kumar tries to get her attention, Harold panics and presses the gas pedal, fleeing the scene. The car goes out of control, careening down a wooded embankment and getting a flat tire. Since Harold has no spare, the duo is forced to accept help from a passing tow truck driver named Freak Show.

Freak Show is a hideous man whose face and neck are covered in boils. While fixing their tire, Freak Show allows Harold and Kumar to go into his house, even implying that they can have sex with his wife. Surprisingly, Freak Show's wife is extremely attractive, and she comes on to both Harold and Kumar, offering them oral sex. However, before anything can happen, Freak Show reenters, forgetting his earlier offer and threatening Harold and Kumar. On being reminded of his proposal, Freak Show suggests a four-way, leading Harold and Kumar to flee, promising never to speak of the incident again.

Back on the road, they pick up Neil Patrick Harris who, high on ecstasy, steals their car, after the duo is distracted by the extreme sport hooligans who are tormenting an Indian convenience store clerk and participating in Xtreme kayaking. After jaywalking to reach a pay phone, Harold is thrown in jail. Kumar calls the cops with a phony story about a shooting in the area, to which all the officers respond. He then proceeds to break Harold out of jail. But before he can, he spots some weed and daydreams of a white collar life with the weed, first envisioning a fairy-tale relationship, immediately followed by an abusive one.

Shortly after escaping, Harold and Kumar smoke some of the weed and spot a runaway cheetah. After it smokes some weed as well, they proceed to ride the cheetah through the woods. But Harold is knocked unconscious after falling off of the cheetah and dreams about having sex with Maria. He wakes up with Kumar on top of him, discovering that the cheetah has run away and the laptop containing all his work is destroyed.

They go to a store and find the extreme sports guys once again taunting them. They eventually throw a rubber ball at Harold's forehead, causing a scar. But knowing what the black guy said about the universe unfolding as it should, they determine that hope is not lost. They then turn things around by capitalizing on the keys left in the punks' Ford Bronco, and steal it.

After stealing the Bronco they are chased by a cop who is after the punks, causing them to nearly drive off of a cliff. Seeing a White Castle below them, the two take a hang glider from the roof of the jeep and glide down to it, escaping the police. At White Castle, Neil Patrick Harris shows up and offers to pay for their meal as a peace offering for stealing their car.

After eating their meal, Kumar reflects over the events throughout the movie and concludes that he will go to his interview scheduled that day. Meanwhile, Harold sees the two co-workers from the start of the film pulling into White Castle. Apparently they have been out all night with two women. Feeling confident, Harold tells off his co-workers, states he will no longer do their work for them and threatens to tell everybody that they contracted gonorrhea from hookers — ending any chance the co-workers have with the women.

Arriving back at their apartment building, the pair runs into Harold's love interest, Maria, and he kisses her. She says she is going on a trip to Amsterdam. Kumar persuades Harold that the two should join her on her trip to Amsterdam because a "certain something" (marijuana) is legal there.

On the TV news, it is reported that authorities are looking for the two men. The pictures, drawn based on their descriptions, show a stereotypical Asian with squinting eyes in a conical straw hat and a Sikh in a turban.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Stereotyping and racism

Harold meeting the man who was arrested for being black.
Harold meeting the man who was arrested for being black.

As Asian Week put it, Harold and Kumar takes the model minority on a road trip.[2] The movie examines racial discrimination and stereotyping, though not deeply enough to offset the comedy. Another Asian Week review of the movie's weak box office performance questioned whether casting two Asian men had contributed to its limited acceptance.

Harold says he is constantly faced with the stereotype of the "intelligent and nerdy East Asian guy", but fears being called a "Twinkie" by his Korean friends. It is explained that a Twinkie is, like the snack food, "yellow on the outside, white on the inside."

Kumar, despite having incredible MCAT scores, refuses to attend medical school as his family wishes, offering the explanation of "just because you're hung like a moose, doesn't mean you have to do porn."

Rosenberg and Goldstein are Harold and Kumar's Jewish friends/counterparts. Rosenberg wears a yarmulke, they smoke pot from a shofar and speak with Yiddish accents. They also do not have a problem eating hotdogs, which may or may not be kosher.

Racism at the hands of the local police is also looked at in the movie. When Harold jaywalks across the street to use a payphone, a white police officer Palumbo pulls up and gives him an extraneous ticket and is unwilling to even listen to the suggestion that Neil Patrick Harris stole his automobile. After a minor argument, Harold is taken to the local jail where his cellmate Tarik, a Rutgers professor has been arrested for fitting the description of an African American robbery suspect from Newark. When Kumar makes the false report of gunfire to bust Harold out, the police looking for suspects arrest another African American man who was at home away from the crime scene. At the end of the movie, Tarik and the other African American man Nathaniel decide to file a discrimination lawsuit against the local police who led by Palumbo angrily protest the lawsuit referring to Tarik and Nathaniel as Darkies. When they describe Harold and Kumar to a sketch artist, the sketch yields a stereotypical and racist drawing of a person from China and India.

[edit] Location

The actual White Castle Restaurant was filmed at the (now closed) Swift Burger Restaurant in Caledon, Ontario, Canada.

The Cherry Hill White Castle location is fictional. The ending scene looks nothing like the real, relatively flat Cherry Hill. Also, the Burger Shack employee (Anthony Anderson) in New Brunswick said that there was a White Castle "up in Cherry Hill." Cherry Hill is south of New Brunswick so the worker should have said down in Cherry Hill. In reality, at least four White Castles are within five miles of Hoboken where Harold and Kumar reside: Jersey City, Manhattan, Union City, and North Bergen.[3] Additionally, there is a White Castle location in New Brunswick, New Jersey, at 680 Somerset Street.[4] The film suggests that White Castle locations are few and far between in New Jersey. There are, in fact, 23 shops in the state.[5] There is, however, a White Castle in Pennsauken, New Jersey, bordering Cherry Hill.

The opening office scene was filmed at the Steelestech office building located on the border of Toronto and Markham on the Toronto side. A few scenes were also shot in Mississauga and in Etobicoke, suburbs west of Toronto. Most of the college scenes were also filmed in Canada — at the University of Toronto's Hart House and Knox College. The scene before Kumar's medical interview was a shot of Bovard Auditorium on the campus of the University of Southern California. In the scenes shot in Canada, Canadian retail companies such as Shoppers Drug Mart and Country Style can be seen in the background. Additionally, in the interior gas station scene, Canadian cigarette brands can be seen to the right of the American brands.[citation needed]

[edit] Trivia

  • Throughout the movie, Kumar can be seen wearing a Meekrab t-shirt. Meekrab was a band co-founded by the nephew of director Danny Leiner, now defunct.
  • It is number 95 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies."
  • Bobby Lee made a cameo appearance as one the members of the East Asian Students Club
  • Ryan Reynolds who was with Kal Penn in the movie Van Wilder makes an appearance as a nurse who hits on Kumar.
  • When Harold's car is stolen by Neil Patrick Harris, he says "Doog, where's my car", and Kumar replies "Where's his car, dude". References to Doogie Howser, MD and to the 2000 comedy film Dude, Where's My Car, a story of two stoners who wake up from a night of wild partying to find out their car is missing and journey to find it.
  • When Harold attempts to park in front of his building and the Extreme punks cut into his parking space, one Extreme punk says, "Better luck tomorrow!", a reference to the 2002 film "Better Luck Tomorrow," starring John Cho.
  • The Extreme Sports punks in the movie are actually together in a Halo 2 trash-talk clan, which does similar activities of intimidation and "extreme" bullying.
  • Although Neil Patrick Harris plays himself in this movie, he is not a drug addict and, even though he is shown as a skirt-chaser, he is in fact gay.
  • White Castle was founded in the 1921 in Wichita, Kansas.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved on 2006-08-24.
  2. ^ [1] Steamed At ‘Cars’ Asian Week. Jun 30, 2006
  3. ^ White Castle locations within 5 miles of Hoboken
  4. ^ White Castle locations in New Brunswick
  5. ^ White Castle locations in New Jersey

[edit] External links

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