‘Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay’ Not Rushdie-esque?
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 04.25.08 | 2:17 PM ET
What could be a better setting for a travel-related screwball comedy than an offshore military prison many argue violates the Geneva Conventions? Sounds like the makings of a major yuck-fest, right? Actually, the premise for the new Harold and Kumar film, which opens today, sounds vaguely amusing as summarized by the New York Daily News’ Joe Neumaier: “Following their munchies-fueled mishaps in the first film, the Jersey college guys head to Amsterdam, but thanks to paranoid airline passengers and Kumar’s bomb-like bong, they’re mistaken for terrorists and shipped to Gitmo.”
But, shockingly, critics are not hot on the film.
Neumaier found it “a big fat missed opportunity.”
The Washington Post wasn’t impressed, either. But I was impressed that critic Stephen Hunter managed to invoke no less than Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul and Joseph Conrad in his review:
As second-generation Americans, their take on the United States is definitely from outside the usual dichotomies, giving them license to poke fun at both sides. They have the weird distance that the second gen confers. Second-genners have only theoretical commitment to the old country and don’t remember its hardships (like their more grateful parents) so they feel no axiomatic indebtedness to the new place. At the same time, they partake eagerly of the pleasures and corruptions of pop culture, and yet they are exiled from it, aware of the racist doubt their presence frequently conjures among people of different colors. How do such guys ever fit in? It’s a subject worthy of a V.S. Naipaul or a Salman Rushdie. Conrad could have taken a grand swing at it, and Updike already has. Writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg ain’t in that league. They’re much more comfortable with penis jokes.
The trailer features, among others, the often funny Rob Corddry, best known for his time on “The Daily Show.” He plays a Homeland Security officer:
Related on World Hum:
* World Hum Movie Club: ‘T Tu Mamá También,’ Part One
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Lee Ann 04.25.08 | 4:43 PM ET
Erm…why do criticsm bother writing about these movies at all? It’s not exactly like Harold and Kumar are out to get much more than a few guffaws! :)
APB 04.25.08 | 9:55 PM ET
There’s a much funnier, sharper and cheaper comedy about Guantanamo Bay on iTunes, called ‘Jesus: The Guantanamo Years’.
“Way beyond superficial religious satire… Absorbing, intricately woven, challenging and… highly entertaining.”
- Malcolm Hay, TimeOut
“Displays superb humanity… destined to be a Fringe favourite… Miraculous. *****”
- The National Student
Jesus Christ returns to earth, but He doesn’t get through U.S. immigration because He’s a bearded, Middle-Eastern guy, prepared to die as a martyr.
Christ is detained and interrogated under the Patriot Act. He is then sent to Guantanamo Bay, which He describes as “a maximum-security prison, designed and run by Kentucky Fried Chicken: there are horrible uniforms; battery-size wire-mesh cages; and most of the staff are ignorant teenagers with no alternative career prospects.”
In His first one-man show for almost two millennia, Jesus talks candidly about His time in Guantanamo, His relationship with His Father, and His on-going legal battle with Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
This award-winning one-man show has delighted live audiences from the Edinburgh Fringe to the USA, and from London’s West End to Pakistan. Within a month of its on-line launch in March 2008, it reached the iTunes Top 10 Comedy Albums in the UK, Finland, Belgium, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden and Japan.
” Well-thought-out and cleverly written… a truly fresh take on the US, Guantanamo Bay and the war on terror…The face of this year’s [Edinburgh] Fringe”
- The Scotsman
“The greatest stand-up story ever told… Funny, thoughtful, impassioned…Abie [Philbin] Bowman deserves a comic sainthood.”
- The Stage
“A rising star on the Irish stand-up scene”
- Time