Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

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.

Variety Robert Koehler

Gleefully upends expectations and delivers an energetic comedy tracing two guys'all-night search for the perfect White Castle burger.

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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A peppy, satisfying comedy that could soon become a minor classic

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Will seem a classic if you're stoned, and only slightly less funny if you're straight.

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The most gut-bustingly funny movie so far this year.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

A blissfully silly, character-driven road movie with impressive laugh-per-minute performance specs.

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.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

May have said more about race in America today than any other movie of last year.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Pretty standard stuff, mixing a few truly clever moments with facile drug humor and throwaway female characters.

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.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Terrific lead performances make this epic stoner comedy watchable but can't save it from flat direction.

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.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The multicultural cast gives a shred of substance to what's otherwise a standard adolescent gross-out flick.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Funnier when high -- what isn't? -- Harold and Kumar may also serve as the first infomercial for weed and burgers.

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.

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.