Comedy/Musical
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Just when you thought it was safe to venture back into your local multiplex, along comes another mindless, raunchy teen sex/pot comedy. Wait, no, that’s not right, not exactly, anyway. What we’re talking about is no ordinary sex or pot flick, but the much anticipated sequel to Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Four years in the making, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is every bit as raunchy, vulgar, crude, viciously parodying racial stereotypes, left, right, and center and then some. It’s that “then some” that ultimately undermines Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay: the jokes are too crass and the political humor too obvious, and thus, sadly, it’s no match for its predecessor. Well, with the exception of Neil Patrick Harris’ return as “Neil Patrick Harris,” a libido-driven, drug-addicted caricature of his public persona.
The sequel picks up minutes after the end of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. After a long, very long night of getting high, running into all sorts of mischief, finding and devouring White Castle hamburgers, Harold Lee (John Cho), one-half of Harold and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn), finally got the nerve to talk to the woman of his dreams, Maria (Paula Garcés). Unfortunately, she was headed to Amsterdam for work, postponing the consummation of their relationship (if that’s what you want to call a few smoldering lips, a conversation on an elevator, and making out). The impulsive Kumar convinces Harold to ditch work and follow Maria to Amsterdam.
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Sphere: Related Content
admin @ April 25, 2008
Action/Adventure, Horror/Suspense, Mystery/Thriller
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Released last summer in the UK and Europe, but only now seeing a stateside release, The Descent is an action/horror hybrid written and directed by Neil Marshall. If Marshall’s name doesn’t sound familiar, it will if you’ve managed to come across and rent a low-budget, little-seen, under-distributed action/horror film from 2002, Dog Soldiers. Dog Soldiers pitted an under-trained squad of weekend soldiers against marauding werewolves in a setting borrowed from George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and James Cameron’s Aliens (you can throw in John Carpenter’s The Thing as a possible influence on Dog Soldiers as well, both in the depiction of violence and the Hawksian approach to intra-group dynamics).
admin @ August 4, 2006
Comedy/Musical, Crime/Drama
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Written by Michael Arndt and helmed by first-time feature directors (and husband-and-wife team) Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Little Miss Sunshine turned out to be the exception to a lackluster 2006 Sundance Film Festival, with Fox Searchlight winning distribution rights. An indie-produced family comedy/drama centered on a road trip to a beauty pageant, Little Miss Sunshine mostly lives up to the hype, thanks to a stellar cast, including Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, and Alan Arkin, plus relative newcomers, Abigail Breslin and Paul Dano. While the premise suggests easy, even cheap, sentimentality, Little Miss Sunshine takes the less-traveled, more scenic, road to get to its final images of reconciliation, all of them earned.
admin @ August 4, 2006
Uncategorized
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Teen pregnancy, homosexuality, class, racism, gentrification, assimilation, acculturation, tradition, religion, and tolerance: alone, they seem like subjects ready-made for an ABC Network “After School Special.” While that’s partially true, it doesn’t come close to describing Richard Glatzer (The Fluffer) and Wash Westmoreland’s (Gay Republicans, The Fluffer) Quinceañera, an indie film that won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Despite rough edges due to an inexperienced cast, indie production values, and the occasionally mishandled scene, the audiences and jury at the Sundance Film Festival were right to give Quinceañera dual awards. Yes, it’s that good. Yes, it’s that thought-provoking, even challenging, but it’s also not didactic or preachy (thankfully).
admin @ August 3, 2006
Uncategorized
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Will Farrell (Kicking and Screaming), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Elf, Old School) is back. Did you miss? Be honest, you probably didn’t know he’d been off screen for the better part of a year. Doesn’t seem that long ago that Farrell was starting to match fellow comedian Ben Stiller with multiple appearances a year. Luckily, Farrell seems to have slowed down somewhat, but we’ll see Farrell in two films in almost as many months, first Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and later this year, Stranger Than Fiction, a promising meta-fictional comedy co-starring Emma Thompson and directed by Marc Foster (Finding Neverland, Monster’s Ball). Sound familiar? It should, as it sounds remarkably like what Jim Carrey attempted to do with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind two years ago.
admin @ August 2, 2006