The stars of "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" said
their sequel slapstick comedy was unpolitical at the premiere in Los Angeles,
California.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (APRIL 17, 2008) REUTERS -
The stoner duo's second film "Harold & Kumar: Escape From
Guantanamo Bay" premiered in Los Angeles, California on Thursday (April
18) hopefully putting to rest questions of what will it take to make a
commercially viable Iraq War movie.
What it will take is humor as the odd-couple protagonists are drawn
more broadly here than in their debut John Cho returns as Harold and co-star
Kal Penn again plays Kumar. Penn's character in the film brings a high-tech
bong on an international flight and gets them both mistaken for would-be
bombers.
"Well this is a sequel to out first movie in this film the
characters have gotten themselves arrested and mistaken for terrorists. Jon
Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg the two guys that wrote the first film they are
also directing this film they just I guess wanted to take the current
political climate and poke fun at ourselves and what's going on in our country
right now. It's not a political film, it's not meant to be serious. I think
the title is even a little misleading because the majority of the movie is
road trip through the south. the set up is that they are mistaken for
terrorists but then they have to clear their names and hilarity sort of ensues
along the way."
The boys get sent to Guantanamo Bay, depicted not with any political
edge but as a generic house of squalor and sodomy. They quickly escape on a
raft -- going on the lam in the direction of Texas via Miami. Cho says that
the political incorrectness in there first film "Harold & Kumar Go to
White Castle" is taken to whole new level in this film.
"I felt it was a idea that actually topped the first one and we
did take if further. One of the things that people loved about the first one
was like all these racial jokes and you know social commentary in there which
we didn't know that people would respond so well to. So I saw the script and I
was like 'Guantanamo Bay. Brilliant.'"
As with the war in Iraq, the early signs on Hollywood's wave of topical
and war-related films were misleading. First, what was timely at one stage of
the Iraq War became more painful as the conflict wore on. The American public
grew weary of a 24/7 news cycle that bombarded them with unpleasant war news,
so dramas and documentaries that revealed the war's dark side soldiers
misbehaving or wounded or victimized became most unwelcome. Hayden Schlossberg
a co-director of the film says he thinks he knows the secret ingredients
needed for a success in this genre.
"I think the secret to a good Iraq post 911 movie is a bottomless
party and that's what our movie has. That was the problem with
"Rendition" and "Lions for Lambs" and these other they
didn't have that extreme nudity which is required to make a social commentary
work. So we fixed those problems and people love it"
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" opens nation-wide
in the United States on April 25, 2008.
