The action begins just minutes after the last movie ended, with uptight Harold Lee (John Cho) and fast-talking Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) on their way to Amsterdam to pursue Maria (Paula Garces), the beauty Harold fell for in the last movie. At the airport, they encounter Vanessa ("One Tree Hill's" Danneel Harris), Kumar's ex-girlfriend for whom he still pines, on her way to Texas to marry the Young Republican Colton (Eric Winter).
Alas, on the flight to Amsterdam, Kumar breaks out his "smokeless bong," which the passengers mistake for a terrorist device - and soon Harold and Kumar are tossed into Guantanamo Bay by an overzealous Homeland Security official (Rob Corddry) who thinks the New Jersey guys represent "North Korea and Al Qaeda working together." The boys manage to escape from Gitmo (hence the movie's title) and embark on a road trip to Texas to clear their names.
First-time directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, who wrote both films, try to top themselves with raunchy and gross-out humor, and they reprise many gags from the first movie. Some, like Kumar's dream of having sex with a giant bag of weed, aren't as funny the second time around. But others, notably Neil Patrick Harris' appearance as a sex-crazed version of himself (this time driving while on 'shrooms), still earn the laughter. (If you go, stay through the credits for an extra joke.)
What doesn't work, surprisingly, is the lampooning of Homeland Security, personified by Corddry's interrogation zealot, as paranoid bumblers. Certainly there's plenty about the Bush administration's War on Terror worthy of satire, but "Harold & Kumar" picks over a carcass that others - like Corddry's former perch at "The Daily Show" - have chewed over with much sharper teeth.
movies@sltrib.com
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
* WHERE: Theaters everywhere.
* WHEN: Opens today.
* RATING: R for strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive language and drug use.
* RUNNING TIME: 102 minutes.
* BOTTOM LINE: The stoner boys from Jersey are back, but the buzz isn't as strong this time.
