The Return of Harold & Kumar

The Saturday 9 pm screening of H&K at downtown Brooklyn's multiplex was the place to be. Not only was the audience very brown, even for Brooklyn, but we ran into several friends there. As my friend Roberto put it, "the beanerati, the chinorati and the Gujarati" were out in force.

First things first: was it as good as the first one? Yes and no. As a sequel, it could never be the breath of fresh air that H&K Go to White Castle was. And as much as I loved the intent of the more politicized humor, the satire of white privilege and racism was blunter than in the first. Writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are good-natured rather than acidic. This is no "South Park" or "Colbert Show."

Structurally, this is a reprise of "White Castle." H&K's road trip through the American South west to Texas (rather than South through Jersey) has them meet the same sorts of characters they did in the first. Chris Melloni is back, as is the anthropomorphic bag of weed (only the deus ex machina cheetah from the first movie is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had a contract dispute?).

And thank god for the extended cameo by Neil Patrick Harris. Never enough of his whoring, snorting alter ego.

The extended trailer that's been circulating online gives away a lot of the movie's punchlines and funny set pieces. Which doesn't make 'em less funny. But here are a couple of things I noticed.

The new Harold: Like the 6 million dollar man, he's "Better. Stronger. Faster." While my devotion for Kal Penn burns bright, John Cho/Harold Lee got a little extra zing in this version. (Look for a hilarious backstory detail in a flashback to H&K's college years). And how can I not love a guy obsessed with food?

The Latin/Asian alliance: In the last movie, the Harold-Maria romance was a small glimpse into a different social order, not dependent on the Black-white racial axis. In this movie, there are a couple of key moments that establish Latin-Asian solidarity. H&K escape Gitmo with the help of some Chevy truck-powered balseros, and in the KKK rally they stumble into, they are called out as "Mexicans!" Implicitly, we're all in the same yola.

Too blunt: Aside from the caricatures of "Arab-looking" Gitmo prisoners, the weakest moment of the film is the extended scene with "President Bush," which plays up his "regular guy" image. Even under the fellowship of a shared joint, it's hard to reconcile the guy who says "I'm in the government and I don't trust it" with the guy who has pushed us into a security state that, um, puts our heroes in secret custody in a judirical no man's land.

And of all the racial stereotype-jokes put in the hands of zealot DHS agent Rob Corddry, one scene where he points a gun at a black man with a cell phone hits just a little close to home days after the Sean Bell verdict.

The writers' biggest political statement -- aside from the obvious one about racial profiling -- is arguing that despite the war on drugs, we are one nation under a bong, and that anyone who pretends otherwise is a "hypocritizer." Characters of all ethnicities, social levels and security clearances are stoners at heart. A weed utopia.

Speaking of people who must be high, Racialicious has a great discussion based on Tom Carson's GQ article on the movie that bizarrely claims that H&K are, alternately, "Happy-Go-Lucky Negros" and closet Jews. The piece is a perfect example of how stuck mainstream society still is on Black-white racial paradigms and Jews as the only minority with assimilation issues.

Carson's reading of the movie completely discounts how the first became successful, in great part, because it was discovered by Asian Americans eager to escape the binds of model minority status. It's not always about you, white man.