Harold and Kumar go to White Castle is the kind of fun, low-budget stoner comedy that had a chance to become a sleeper hit two decades ago, instead of just having a 30-day run in theaters before going straight to streaming. But unlike other bong-ripping late 90s/early 2000s brethren Dude, where’s my car?—also directed by Danny Leiner—and Half baked, Harold and Kumar is an intriguing mix of dumb and smart, thanks in part to the script by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (now co-creators of The karate child sequel series Cobra KaiThis wacky road trip film has similarities to the life of a picaresque, but also plays cheerfully with stereotypes and the strange sides of American life that you only encounter late at night.

Despite their dramatic credentials as working actors, John Cho was best known in 2004 for popularizing the term “MILF” in American piewhile Penn played Taj Mahal Badalandabad (get it?), the hero’s loyal, heavily accented sidekick in From Wilder of National Lampoon. Hurwitz and Schlossberg based several characters on their classmates at Randolph Highand their screenplay gave Cho and Penn their first chance to play the heroes, though the studios couldn’t understand why Harold had to be Korean-American and Kumar Indian-American. An executive asked the writers, “Look, we really love this movie. Why don’t we make it with a white guy and a black guy?” Where many Asian actors in 20e century Hollywood played martial artists, silent monks or hard-working students, Harold and Kumar are quasi-slackers who get stoned and laugh at bad anti-drug ads on TV. “‘Harold & Kumar’ is a movie that shows that Asian Americans can be hot messes, too,” Anthony Ocampo told NBC News in April 2024, which is in line with the experience of many viewers of Asian descent who could identify with the characters.

Cho and Penn immediately fit into a classic comedy duo act, with Harold as the troubled straight guy and Penn as the impulsive, funny horndog. The film even ties this dynamic into the racism the characters regularly face. In the opening, two white brothers—the guys most other 2000s comedies would host—push their work on Harold, who they think won’t mind being “the quiet Asian guy in the office.” Both Harold and Kumar struggle with how to subvert stereotypes and what society expects of them. Kumar is talented, but doesn’t want to follow in his father and brother’s footsteps and be just another Indian doctor. The mild-mannered Harold is constantly bullied, muttering that Asian fraternity member Cindy Kim (Siu Ta) calls him a Twinkie: “yellow on the outside, white on the inside.”

Cho handles the bulk of the film’s arc, which involves Harold building up his confidence, and he pulls it off with flying colors. The duo’s misadventures of cooking up a White Castle include a cameo from Ryan Reynolds (naturally), stolen cars, hang gliders, and a gloriously fake racoon doll. The characters may be stoned, but they’re no fools, which only adds to their frustration with the intolerant cops and racist skate punks they encounter.

The straightest character, Kumar, makes some old-fashioned homophobic one-liners (ironically, Penn was released in 2021), and nothing here is as politically correct as it is in so many 2000s comedies. Yet none of the characters Harold and Kumar encounter on their quest are ever what they seem. There’s Anthony Anderson’s sinister Burger Shack employee, Freakshow (Christopher Meloni), the deformed swinger who happens to be a nice guy, Cindy Kim and the “lame” Asian sorority girl who really knows how to party, and the surprisingly ruthless “business hippie.” Than There’s Neil Patrick Harris, who rose to fame playing a hitchhiking, horny, drug-addled parody of himself. It’s a passionate, hilarious performance that revived his career and inspired thousands of other celebrities to venture into similar comedic territory. Harris, like Carl Weathers in Development arrestedremains the best because he never gives away for a second that he is in on the joke. When he leaves the film, Harold and Kumar ask where he is going. He puts on his sunglasses and sings dramatically: “Wherever God takes me.”

As with many American road trip films, including Paper moon And Two-lane asphaltthe raw strangeness and promise of the land always plays a role. Kumar’s speech connecting the American Dream to their dream of White Castle should be absurd, but it is Real also. The single best quality this horrible place ever had was the concept of a place seemingly free of caste or class, where you could chase your dreams, even if it was just a bag of tiny hamburgers and crumpled paper bags filled with fries.

When the film hit theaters in 2004, white castle was a modest hit and did very well on DVDwhich led to two sequels, the 2008 Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay And A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas. But despite having bigger budgets and bigger storylines, neither film had the same understated charm as the first. I’m a big believer in Manny Farber’s “white elephant art” – loud, clear media where everything is on the surface – versus “termite art”, something that digs deep into the ideas. The first Harold and Kumar the characters ride a cheetah, smoke tons of weed, and gain an advantage over the white Americans who see them as nothing more than stereotypes and racist images. It’s a stoner comedy with something on its brain, and that’s worth more than its weight in White Castle.