Of all the grim and somber films over the past year skewering America’s mismanagement of the “War on Terror” — each of which have run aground at the box office — who’d have thought that an absurdist stoner comedy would be the one to get it right?! Significantly more politically charged than the original, this completely over-the-top and shockingly un-PC sequel to Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle levels its sights on radical Muslim terrorists, Homeland Security xenophobes, inbred Southerners and, of course, President George W. Bush. And just as in the first film, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay hits you between the eyes with some very real and very serious moral outrage while you’re distracted, doubled over in laughter.

When we last saw Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn), they had just traveled the length and breadth of New Jersey to satisfy a cannabis-induced case of the munchies. This new film picks up almost the instant the last film left off (if you haven’t seen the original, you will be lost, though no less amused). Harold’s newly minted girlfriend Maria is on her way to Amsterdam and the twosome decide that the only logical course of action is to follow her. Something tells me they may have ulterior motives.

But their plans go awry when Kumar is caught on board their transatlantic flight with his trusty pot. It’s amazing how much “bong” sounds like “bomb.” Suspected of being terrorists (“North Korea and Al Queda working together!”), the pair is tossed into Guantanamo Bay. Of course they don’t stay there long. After all, the title of the film implies that our high-flying heroes will escape from their incarceration and make their way back across America while being subjected to all forms of humiliating and degrading behavior, desperately searching for the one man who can clear their names.

Just as the first film (a unexpected, if guilty, pleasure) cloaked a very serious discussion of race relations in America beneath the veneer of absurdist comedy, the sequel pokes fun at our prejudices, nuking any semblance of political correctness in an effort to manipulate, subvert and demolish stereotypes. The filmmakers know stoner humor will only take them so far. As any first year drama student will tell you, one of the main functions of comedy and satire is to openly and contemptuously tackle problematic social issues.

Don’t be fooled into believing that this sex-drugs-and-rock-‘n’-roll comedy doesn’t have serious sociological teeth. With satire masquerading as potty humor and righteous rage as frat-house lunacy, Harold and Kumar roasts America’s post-9/11 paranoia, authoritarian excesses, racial profiling and tolerance of extraordinary rendition and torture. When a government official literally wipes his backside with the Bill of Rights, you know you’re watching a film that doesn’t care a whit for subtlety.

Penn, who took some time off from comedy to flex his dramatic muscles (The Namesake and television’s 24), returns here to what he knows best. Cho, who will be playing the young Hikaru Sulu in next summer’s Star Trek reboot by J.J. Abrams, has the magical power to make even the act of cursing side-splittingly funny.

But you didn’t begin reading this review to hear me praise Penn or Cho did you? You could care less about Daily Show alums and all-around funnymen Rob Corddry and Ed Helms, could you? You don’t even want to hear about Law and Order: Special Victims Unit’s Christopher Meloni taking an unrecognizable turn as a Ku Klux Klansman, do you? I know what you want. You’ll be happy to know that the cult of Neil Patrick Harris (of which I am a proud member in good standing) is alive and well. Harris returns for a self-deprecating, encore, cameo meta-performance, playing himself as a drug-consuming sexaholic who exploits his Doogie Howser M.D. fame at every turn. (Harris was all but washed-up when the pop-culture savvy star made an appearance in the first film that brought the house down and reinvigorated his career as a funnyman with almost supernatural comic timing.)

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is even raunchier than the first film if such a thing is possible. How it secured a tame R-rating (all is relative) is beyond me. Incorporating pervasive scatological humor, absurd amounts of nudity and enough profanity to make a sailor blush, Harold and Kumar represents Hollywood’s latest effort to push the envelope of social acceptability.

Harold and Kumar also knows how to push all our buttons, but it rewards our discomfort with even bigger laughs than those found in the first film. Just don’t be surprised if you leave the theater as troubled as you are entertained.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.