Harlold + Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Dir Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg (2008)

Last night I just might have seen The Film of 2008. On Saturday me and my comrade Tony Jones bought the DVD of Harold + Kumar Get The Munchies, it was awesome. We didn't realise at the time that it so happens the sequel is at the cinema right NOW. Go and see it already!

I've been on a journey recently; I began to feel slightly fatigued with the 'deep' and 'artistic' cinema I was watching, and disillusioned with the stream of recent shite that's been hitting the arthouse. Watching The Savages and seeing it roundly praised by blowhards... hmm, I could've laid my head on the rail and had old steam train Bill come roll on over my neck a time or two. So, I got to thinking about the kind of films that seemed magical to me as a child. And more than the nice fantastical films soon grown out of, it was films like Porkies that really stuck with me. Watching them as a child was so exciting; outrageously funny, getting to see rude things and feeling excited about the prospect of being a teenager, having friends, drinking, getting stoned and up to mischief.

As a grow-ed man, I left Harlold + Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay with that same kind of childhood glee and enthusiasm, wanting badly to go on a wild road trip across America.

This film has many elements of the great teen comedies of my youth. It has the hilarious cameo of a world leader (George W Bush, who the boys smoke dope with), red necks (with a twist), corrupt and very racist cops, the Ku Klux Klan... a cameo by a minor celebrity crazed on mushrooms branding whores at a whorehouse with a monographed branding iron. And Guantanamo bay, where inmates have to eat Cock Meat Sandwiches. Oh, and a child cyclops and a giant living bag of weed that gets fisted. & so much more! AWESOME movie.

I spoke recently about blowhards trying to link everything to 9/11 - well this film deals with America post-9/11 far more than any chinstroker could. It all starts when Kumar smuggles a BONG onto an aeroplane...

Hilarious film, hits everything you could want it to. And ya know... sometimes the lowbrow is worth more than the highbrow. You could make a long aching meditation on how mixed up and racist America is, and viewers could discuss it round a dinner table, or laugh your balls off in the face of the racists, toke up and go on an awesome roadtrip, get laid and have a riot along the way. The lead characters from minority groups are normal everyday Americans, the racists are freakin' insane, crazy and violent - it's a premise I can ride with.

I can't wait til I'm a teenager, I'm gonna have so much freakin' fun and make good friends who stick by me, no matter how many Cock Meat Sandwiches we have to eat along the way. Road Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip!!!