Product Description

In the year's funniest comedy, two guys on a quest to satisfy their cravings for burgers find themselves on a hilarious all-night adventure as they run into one screwy obstacle after another.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
DVD ROM Features
Deleted Scenes
Featurette
Interviews
Music Video
Other:Spansh Subtitles!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1434 in DVD
• Brand: NEW LINE HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2005-01-04
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Hindi
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 88 minutes

Amazon.com
From the director of Dude, Where's My Car? comes another crazed tale of two friends on a perilous quest--in this case, to eat burgers at the fast food restaurant White Castle. The pair--repressed Harold (John Cho, Better Luck Tomorrow) and freewheeling Kumar (Kal Penn, Love Don't Cost a Thing)--get extremely high and set off on the road, only to be sidetracked by skateboarding hooligans, racist cops, an inbred tow truck driver, and Neil Patrick Harris--yes, Doogie Howser, M.D. The humor is all over the map, and it would be nice if there were one female character who wasn't a caricature, but Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle has a loose, gregarious charm, and the movie's canniness about the cliches of the buddy-movie genre give it a sneaky subversive feel--just the fact that neither of the heroes is white puts a different spin on just about every circumstance. Surprisingly clever, cheerfully stupid. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
A stoner comedy starring "persons of colors." Harold (John Cho) is a Korean investment banker, and his best friend, Kumar (Kal Penn), is a South Asian slacker avoiding medical school. The talky script presents white people as an ethnic group like any other, worthy of mockery (extreme-sports guys) and praise (John Hughes movies). Despite that innovation, Harold and Kumar encounter the usual teen-movie setups, right down to the encounter with the faded television celebrity (Neil Patrick Harris, a.k.a. Doogie Howser, M.D.). The movie is worth seeing for its manhandling of political correctness and Penn's irreverent charisma-just don't expect a revolution. Directed by Danny Leiner, whose previous effort was the Brechtian drama "Dude, Where's My Car?" -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Harold and Kumar Rule
I just got through watching this movie and I have to say that "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" is one of the greatest films ever made. You read that right. There have been other reviews on this site comparing "Harold and Kumar" to Cheech and Chong films, "American Pie", etc. All those people miss the point. Yes, this movie is about young people and, yes, this movie is about stoners, but, strictly speaking, those things are incidental. "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" is a classic and this movie is a classic because this movie "gets it"; it "gets it" like no other movie in the history of filmdom has ever gotten it. From the moment these two brilliant potheads see an advertisment on TV for White Castle they are on a quest, a quest for burgers. They go through a series of escapades involving racist cops, stolen marijuana, jailbreaks, junkyard freaks, Doogie Howser stealing Harold's car and so on and so on, each episode more insane than the last and everything screamingly funny. And through it all they persevere because they're on a quest. You see, "Harold and Kumar" is unique in the history of film because it understands that the point of cruising ... is cruising itself!!!! In what other country in the world can you hop onto an Interstate and then, 45 minutes later, you can buy these cheap little burgers with the little onions on them, 6 for $2.99 plus fries and a soda? Only in America!!! That's what the American Dream is all about: White Castle Burgers!!!! The point of the journey ... is the journey itself. There is so much sage wisdom in this movie: that "the universe has a tendency to balance itself out" (not unlike the Hindu principle of Karmic realignment?), that what a man wants is that feeling of satisfaction when he gets what he most desires (said by Harold while observing their two Jewish friends fulfilling their own quest at Hot Dog Heaven) or Kumar's observation that their parents came to this country because they were poor and oppressed ... and hungry. I'm not Asian, and I couldn't care less if Harold is Korean and Kumar is Indian; personally, I found Harold and Kumar to be two of the most quintessentially American characters I've ever encountered in a movie. And that's the genius of this film: this movie realizes that being an American isn't about race or ethnicity: being an American is a state of mind. I truly believe "Harold an Kumar Go to White Castle" will go down as one of the classics of cinema. And, no, I was not stoned when I wrote this.

Don't analyze this movie.
Who writes these reviews??? This film is not meant for analysis, or introspection, or cultural relevence. Here is the "bottom line". Did you think Cheech and Chong were funny? If you said "NO", then get on with your life! You have no reason to see this film. If you said "YES", then get yourself a copy of this wraunchy, in-your-face, dube-smokin', road trippin', fart rippin', juvenile-giant of a comedy! Sure it's an all-out sell, for the White Castle franchise, but let me ask you: How many of you were ever stoned, and wanted Whities Sliders??? This movie made my 60 year old mom laugh! For those of you who are too young, or too disconnected, to know about Cheech and Chong, let me put it plain, and simple. Did you ever party like a maniac, and find yourself REALLY hungy, horny, and completely lost? If you've been there, then this film is for you, and ME. My actual rating is 4.5 stars. Yep. It was that depraved. ENJOY!

Nothing is as it should be, but everything is as it is.
It seems like a lot of people are saying this is a comedy about nothing, or that it's just a road movie. It's more than that: It's a really good road movie, it's very funny, and it adds to a tradition that includes both Huckleberry Finn and The Heart of Darkness. It's stinging social commentary.

Harold and Kumar are both upwardly mobile second-generation Americans of immigrant parents. They're fighting against type in a world of stereotypes--Harold struggles not to be the number-loving, quiet asian and Kumar avoids the med-school path of his father and older brother. And yet, that's where they find they have placed themselves. Harold is an investment banker and Kumar is a skilled doctor despite his reluctance to go to medical school. They spend their free time getting high and laughing at antidrug commercials. On weekends they allow themselves to rebel comfortably, but it's clear they are dependent upon the rewards of following society's script--they share a nice apartment, they have other good friends (stereotypes, all), a love interest of color, and they travel in a new car toward their ultimate goal of eating several tiny hamburgers.

But when they leave the safety of their multicultural civic center and venture into the hinterlands of the American countryside, they fully begin their odyssey through the strata of the American class pyramid. Above them are the wealthy gatekeepers, like Harold's bullying preppy co-workers and Kumar's med school admissions dean. Below them are the embittered whites who feel like they are losing opportunities one after another, and further below are the imigrants and blacks who must suffer daily at the hands of this anger.

The comedy comes from the clashing of stereotypes, in how they are all simultaneously true and false. The "extreme" mountain dew guys who are sold as he-men with surplus bravado are outed here as being also nihilistic zombie bullies. NPH turns out to be a self-absorbed, self-destructive star on his way to supernova. The horribly disfigured rural white "Freakshow" turns out not to be a psychotic sex killer but rather just a garden-variety pervert (and their modern take on the old traveling salesman joke pushes against the heartland's rep as the home of family values). The one-note cops, however, only get to sell the white anger.

What's most interesting about the movie is how H&K react to the plight of blacks and immigrants. They recognize their lower-class dopplegangers walking together down a dark sidewalk and watch passively as those stand-ins get jumped and beaten to a pulp. The scene is played for a laugh (and laughing is appropriate in a comedy), but it's also the first defining moment in their journey. Do they call the police? An ambulance? Stop the car and help the poor guys? No. They drive on.

There are plenty of run-ins. They're witness to the extreme dudes ruining the immigrant's store, and they're powerless to stop it. They're not from here, you see, they're just stopping for gas, they can't get involved, they can't help. Sorry. They can't upset the order that rewards them so well. Likewise, the extreme dudes let them pass because hurting them would in and of itself upset that same order and rouse Johnny Law. The immigrant owner pleads to Harold and Kumar with his eyes, but it's as if the extreme leader tells them straight on: Look, you're powerless to stop this and so am I. Basically, "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown" or if you'd rather, it's the Matrix.

When Harold gets to jail, we meet a black buddah who has come to enlightenment as much through book-learning as from night-stick blows. Incredibly, he tells them they can't change the world and that they should essentially turn the other cheek. And when the prisoner is again abused in their presence, they gladly accept the advice of another black prisoner. "If I were you," he tells them, "I would get the hell out of here." He might as well have said, "If I were of your class, I would get the hell out of here."

And they do. They realize, and become grateful for, their status in society, they 'live and let live', and they trust that their universe--the deus ex machina of this story--will resolve things comically before the credits. By supporting the system, they are amply rewarded.

Near the climax, Kumar delivers a patriotic speech that salutes America not as the land of opportunity, but of consumer choice--the last tangible measure of our collective freedom (much as a 'social safety net' and 'access to health care' used to be). The boys make it to White Castle, and there they gorge themselves in a commercial ritual of assimilation. In an absurd gesture of quantity over quality, manufacturing over cooking, flavor over nutrition, and form over function, they each eat dozens of tiny hamburger "sliders" as they slide further into the melting pot.

It's hard to divine a moral to this story beyond, "Nothing is as it should be, but everything is as it is." I can believe that Hollywood would create and disseminate that message, but this movie was conspicuously too smart and too countercultural to deliver that GOP payload. I've been thinking about it for days and I just can't figure it out.