Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

I’ll make this quick.

I didn’t care much for the original HAROLD & KUMAR, although time has mellowed my opinion on it a bit. More than anything, it’s the uneven tone of the first film that drove me crazy.

The second film is... well... more of the same.

Here’s what Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg do well. When they set up a sterotype, and they play that stereotype out as big and broad and offensive as possible, and then suddenly, they play a switch-up, and they turn it inside out somehow... that’s their best trick. And they did it several times in the first film, and they do it several times in this film. It’s a eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too move for writer/directors.

They also obviously understand what chemistry it is that exists between John Cho and Kal Penn. My first review was misunderstood or misconstrued by some people, I think, as somehow anti-Asian. Hardly. My favorite thing about the first movie was the opening move, where you’re watching a film about a bunch of blonde douchebag frat guys, and 99.9% of all comedies would be about those guys. They’re planning a big party, gonna get fucked up, and they just need to dump some work on some little dweeb and then they’re good to go. Harold (John Cho) is the dweeb they drop the stuff on, and then... we follow Harold home instead. Instead of the movie about the douchebag party (which is a great title for a terrible film), we see what Harold does with his weekend. I like Cho more than Penn (although I like Penn a lot in THE NAMESAKE), and I think he grounds things nicely in a way that keeps the films from being unwatchably broad.

I think both movies are too frantic. I wish they had let some of the scenes breathe more, and really played out the smart stuff. I think Hurwitz and Schlossberg are better directors with this sequel than Danny Lanier was with the first one. This one’s a better-made film. It’s a refinement of most of what worked in the first H&K, and there are some particular things I enjoyed. In particular, there are several standouts in the supporting cast, which was true of the first one as well.

Rob Corddry does what he was hired to do as Ron Fox, his smarm turned up to about 1000. Ed Helms has a great supporting role, and his scene with the parents of Harold and Kumar is one of the funniest in the film. And, yes, Neil Patrick Harris is back, and it’s a nice stretch of film for him. I think you have to have a serious chip on your shoulder not to laugh at NPH’s work here or at least appreciate his ability to explode his own public persona. I don’t think the George W. Bush material’s particularly cutting or new, but I’ll give James Adomian credit for his big broad work. The bottomless party is interesting if only because of how unusual it is to see an acre of on-screen vag in mainstream cinema.

On the other hand, I thought Roger Bart (a darn fine performer given the right material) was saddled with the textbook definition of a thankless role, and he never manages to make it work. And there are several scenes in the film that are full of empty, plastic “outrage,” and no matter how willfully dirty, they’re not particularly funny. And the mechanical resolution of the predictable bad-guy subplot doesn’t work at all. I wish the film didn’t feel the need for something that rote. This film is at its best when it refuses to do what we’re used to, and when it takes the characters seriously. I think it’s telling that the single biggest laugh comes from Cho in a flashback to the early days of college, when I’m guessing The Cure was very important to him. There’s so much packed into this one particularly sulky pose he strikes.

And I’m almost sure that’s real weed they’re smoking during the Amsterdam conclusion of the film. I wonder what that goes under on a line budget.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles