HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE

In this crackdown era, HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE is one of the last things you'd expect from a major studio: a genuine doper comedy. It also turns out to have a couple of serious messages on its mind (delivered hilariously and offhandedly) and a plot that tracks and ties together with its surreal elements, which are a few of the last things you'd expect of a stoner comedy. In fact, it is surprisingly good and plain surprising all around.

Harold (John Cho) is a hard-working young corporate employee who is shamelessly taken advantage of by his coworkers, who blithely force him to take on their workloads at a moment's notice. Harold's roommate Kumar (Kal Penn) is an academic genius who couldn't care less about his grade point average or getting into college (despite the threat of being financially cut off by his doctor father) he just wants to get high and enjoy life. When Kumar convinces Harold to bring his weekend work home with him, the two share a joint and watch TV. A commercial for White Castle hamburgers comes on, and the guys are hit by a fiercely specific case of the munchies. The pair head out in Harold's car in search of the nearest White Castle, a simple-sounding quest that winds up taking them on an all-night tour of every corner of New Jersey.

What makes HAROLD & KUMAR stand out among both its overtly stoner brethren and the crop of contemporary buddy comedies is not so much the ethnicity of the leads though this is probably the first mainstream American movie to team a Korean American and an Indian American but rather that its two heroes are fairly brainy. They have their share of pratfalls and dumb luck, but both Harold and Kumar are capable of outsmarting trouble, which they do on a regular basis. The script by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg also handles incidents of racism with a wry, light touch not often seen with this kind of subject matter. Instead of being outraged, Harold and Kumar react to taunts with the air of people exasperated by being taken as uncool by jerks who are in fact far less cool than they are. There are also parodies of other genres a send-up of backwoods horror is so on the money that we almost expect our heroes to wind up dead and a running gag with Neil Patrick Harris (playing himself in a turn of extreme good sportsmanship) is a superior spoof of the notion of a celebrity found wandering the 'burbs. Even the slow-burning romance of Harold and his pretty neighbor (Paula Garces) is charming.

Danny Leiner directs with deft good timing the jokes last long enough to register without ever wearing out their welcome, and all of his performers are on the same wavelength. Penn is a real find, a droll hipster capable of true astonishment think Peter Reigert in ANIMAL HOUSE. Cho, as the more cautious of the dynamic duo, has appealing presence and exudes an agreeable sense of sanity. Christopher Meloni, virtually unrecognizable in prosthetics, gives great assist as a rural type who is full of surprises.

HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE has no pretensions and (a bit of a rarity for a teen comedy) no cruelty. It is irreverent, quick, cheerful, funny and very much worth seeing.