A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011)

After going through several painful Christmas comedies, I decided to watch one I knew would be terrible and, having not seen the other two movies of the Harold & Kumar series (because I'm awful), I thought watching A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas was the right thing to do.

Six years after Guantanamo Bay (don't ask me what happened because, like I said above, I haven't seen that one), Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are estranged from one another and live very different lives. Harold works at Wall Street, got married and has his own home. Kumar is unemployed, single and still lives in the apartment he used to share with Harold. Then on Christmas Eve, Kumar shows up at Harold's house with a mysterious package and he inadvertently burns down Harold's father-in-law's (Danny Trejo) Christmas tree. Afraid of how his father-in-law is going to react, the two set out to find the perfect Christmas tree.

I don't think I need to tell you this isn't your typical heart-warming Christmas story. It's quite the opposite. It's a completely ridiculous, implausible and stupid story with an even more ridiculous feel-good ending that feels very awkward. And it lacks development. There's nothing happening other than I wrote above. And yet it was 'engaging' enough to be watchable. 

Warner Bros. Pictures

Stories, however, are never a stoner comedy's greatest strength. The humour should be and it kinda was for A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas. There's a lot of dirty jokes, Russian mafia jokes, weed gags and some pretty dark jokes with a kid taking every kind of extreme drug one can think of (weed, cocaine, ecstasy, all of them), basically the kind of raunchy humour one would expect from this kind of movie. There's also Neil Patrick Harris playing a fictionalized version of himself which consists of him making gay jokes (but I guess it's okay since he's gay, right?). The problem? It isn't that effective. I did laugh, but only occasionally. And I don't know who to blame here, the writers, the actors or the 3D.

Anyway, there are a few decent things in this film. One is Neil Patrick Harris. He is as funny as always and his out-of-the-blue musical moment is easily the best scene in the film. There's also a nice claymation sequence, probably the funniest and memorable moment. That claymation dick though, how do I unsee that?

Also, where can I get a wafflebot? That thing is awesome! It'd probably hate me though: I'm team pancakes.