GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
New Line Cinema

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 64 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.2 out of 10
based on 29 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 81 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for strong language, sexual content, drug use and some crude humor

Starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Sandy Jobin-Bevans, Fred Willard, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Paula Garcés, and Christopher Meloni

In the great cinematic tradition of "Road Trip" and "Dude, Where's My Car?" comes Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, which follows two likeable underdogs who set out on a Friday night quest to satisfy their craving for White Castle hamburgers and end up on an epic journey of deep thoughts, deeper inhaling and a wild road trip as un-PC as it gets. (New Line Cinema)


GENRE(S): Comedy  
WRITTEN BY: Jon Hurwitz
Hayden Schlossberg
 
DIRECTED BY: Danny Leiner  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: January 4, 2005 
Video: January 4, 2005 
Theatrical: July 30, 2004 
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA / Canada 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

83
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Harold and Kumar share a quality the overgrown adolescents in films like this are never allowed to possess: They're witty, focused, and highly aware. They make having a brain look hip.
Read Full Review
80
Variety Robert Koehler
Gleefully upends expectations and delivers an energetic comedy tracing two guys'all-night search for the perfect White Castle burger.
Read Full Review
80
LA Weekly Chuck Wilson
Smart, goofy and endearing, Cho and Penn make a terrific team, and the fact that they're starring in their own movie suggests that, in the Hollywood comedy frat house, there's finally room for everyone.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Desson Thomson
A peppy, satisfying comedy that could soon become a minor classic
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Will seem a classic if you're stoned, and only slightly less funny if you're straight.
Read Full Review
78
Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
You don't just root for Harold and Kumar to get the girl, get the weed, and, above all, get the burger – you want to hang out with them while they' doing it, and see if they'e free next Friday night, too.
Read Full Review
75
New York Post Lou Lumenick
The most gut-bustingly funny movie so far this year.
Read Full Review
75
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Penn's Kumar could become Jeff Spicoli for the generation of college kids who've never seen "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" but always seem to have a copy of "Dude, Where's My Car?" cued up at a moment's notice.
Read Full Review
75
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
I laughed often enough during the screening of Harold & Kumar that afterward I told Dann Gire, distinguished president of the Chicago Film Critics' Assn., that I thought maybe I should rent "Dude, Where's My Car?" and check it out.
Read Full Review
75
Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt
This stoner buddy movie is filled with raunchy, gross-out humor. It's immature, clunky and probably the best bit of groundbreaking social commentary we've seen in years.
Read Full Review
70
Village Voice Dennis Lim
Winds up a sweetly nonchalant and excellently unwhiny allegory of seeking and gaining entry to the Caucasian fortress that is present-day America, or at least nocturnal New Jersey.
Read Full Review
70
The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
A blissfully silly, character-driven road movie with impressive laugh-per-minute performance specs.
Read Full Review
70
Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
That Cho and Penn are such likable actors and are so funny in their roles earns the movie more slack than it probably deserves and prevents it from being just another gross-out comedy.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
May have said more about race in America today than any other movie of last year.
Read Full Review
63
Baltimore Sun Staff (Not Credited)
In their formidable quest for junk food, Harold and Kumar end up redefining what the all-American protagonists of Hollywood movies should look like - and prove this comedy is not quite as brain-dead as it originally appeared.
Read Full Review
63
USA Today Mike Clark
The recent model for this kind of surreal jazz-riff comedy is Doug Liman's 1999 "Go," a neo-classic. But you know already from the director (Dude, Where's My Car?'s Danny Leiner) if this movie is for you. Leiner has cornered the recent market on low-rent farces.
Read Full Review
63
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Clearly, this unabashedly silly movie, written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, is the work of people with a grasp of the stream-of-consciousness creativity that a few bong hits can impart.
Read Full Review
60
The New York Times Stephen Holden
The chemistry between the two is as old as Abbott and Costello. Harold is the sensible worried one, and Kumar zany and reckless. The movie's funniest moments, set at Princeton University, caricature and then demolish the image of Asian-Americans as nerdy, sexless bookworms incapable of fun.
Read Full Review
60
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
It boldly subverts stereotypes and challenges conventional wisdom by presenting affable Korean and Indian antiheroes who are just as sex-crazed, irresponsible, mischief-prone, and chemically altered as their white counterparts.
Read Full Review
60
TV Guide Angel Cohn
The outlandish premise and greasy title may be a little hard to swallow, but Danny Leiner's proudly moronic film embraces its boneheadedness so cheerfully that its lowbrow charms are nearly irresistible.
Read Full Review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter
Plays it a little too safe and hackneyed with the comedy, but the characters and the talented actors who play them are a refreshing change of pace that make the movie feel like a minor buddy-comedy revolution.
Read Full Review
50
San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer
Pretty standard stuff, mixing a few truly clever moments with facile drug humor and throwaway female characters.
Read Full Review
50
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The laugh ratio in this run-on of skits is pretty low, at least to the unaltered mind of one who's seen enough of these films and eaten enough White Castle burgers to last a lifetime.
Read Full Review
50
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
Terrific lead performances make this epic stoner comedy watchable but can't save it from flat direction.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
For the most part this reminded me of a hysterical passenger pushing random buttons in the cockpit of a plunging airplane.
Read Full Review
50
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The multicultural cast gives a shred of substance to what's otherwise a standard adolescent gross-out flick.
Read Full Review
50
Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Funnier when high -- what isn't? -- Harold and Kumar may also serve as the first infomercial for weed and burgers.
Read Full Review
50
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
The twist of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, a laugh-out-loud if not-exactly-good stoner comedy, is that its heroes, an entry-level investment banker and a brainiac pre-med student, are not dimwits.
Read Full Review
42
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
The official R rating is for "strong language, sexual content, drug use and some crude humor," but the MPAA is just being polite. It's all crude.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 81 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Ellen P. gave it a3:
I was barely interested enough to finish watching this self-indulgent movie. Not very funny, and so filled with stereotypes - especially odd for a movie that aims to reverse the Asian/Indian image. The one thing I did enjoy was Neil Patrick Harris' cameo.

Dean S. gave it a3:
If I was sixteen and hadn't seen these jokes before, I would have thought it was hysterical. Since I'm not I rarely cracked a smile.

Steven V. gave it a10:
I loves this movie cause this movie made me laugh so much.

Ryan M. gave it a10:
A generation-defining masterwork. It's a one-of-a-kind journey into the mind of the 21st century stoner, and perhaps the funniest film since the ball dropped in 2000.

Anthony S. gave it a10:
Great movie, kuumar reminds me of my best friend chris, they look alike.

Amanda gave it a10:
This movie was the funniest movie I have ever seen in my life and I loveee it!!

Mike S. gave it a10:
Funny! Hilarious! If you don't laugh at this one, then you have some serious depression issues.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use