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Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
New Line Cinema
FILM:
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 |
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.
80
Variety
Robert Koehler
Gleefully upends expectations and delivers an energetic comedy tracing two guys'all-night search for the perfect White Castle burger.
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.
80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
A peppy, satisfying comedy that could soon become a minor classic
80
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Will seem a classic if you're stoned, and only slightly less funny if you're straight.
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.
75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
The most gut-bustingly funny movie so far this year.
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.
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.
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.
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.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Michael Rechtshaffen
A blissfully silly, character-driven road movie with impressive laugh-per-minute performance specs.
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.
70
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
May have said more about race in America today than any other movie of last year.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Pretty standard stuff, mixing a few truly clever moments with facile drug humor and throwaway female characters.
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.
50
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
Terrific lead performances make this epic stoner comedy watchable but can't save it from flat direction.
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.
50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
The multicultural cast gives a shred of substance to what's otherwise a standard adolescent gross-out flick.
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.
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.
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.
 The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 79 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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