Deck the halls with Marijuana

It’s a very stoner Christmas—what’d you expect?

By Morgan P Salvo


On Prancer… on Donner…on Harold…on Kumar??…ok With Halloween just over, Thanksgiving looming in the wind, Bam! we get our first X-mas flick. I have two words for you: Prepare for A Very Harold and Kumar’s 3D Christmas. I think its genius for the guys that bring stoner humor, lame sex jokes, bodily functions and bad taste to the screen to beat everyone to the punch and its in 3D no less. That said this movie is amazingly stupid.
I actually liked H&K goes to White Castle much to my surprise and I freakin’ walked out of H&K escape from Guantanamo it was that moronic. H&K X-MAS isn’t that insulting it’s just in a world of its own suffering from an extreme case of pathetic. Ripe with stereotypes This H&K boasts an extensive list of bad and unfinished ideas. Many setups fall as flat as a squished THC laden brownie while others just glide along in wimpiness and only a few explode with originality. Mainly there is a visible collision course with unsurprising mediocrity. It’s a shame the movie relies way too much on that lame super-predictable (I can’t-stand-more-than-anything) Airplane kind of humor. I have a hard time relating to really simple comedies where I can see the punch lines coming a mile away. Some Claymation allows some wild stoner ideas and blood-letting and other non claymation scenes offered some ultra decent gore.I have to give props to special effects makeup artist Gregory Nicotero whose gory handiwork I recognized. And it’s not everyday you get to see Santa shot in the head.
Obviously Kal Penn is done working with Obama. The most watchable aspects of this flick are Penn and John Cho’s deadpan performances. They stay uncannily believable while the movie stretches the imagination like a rubber band around the equator. This flick milks the stupid out of every scene but the kick-ass 3D actually works in its favor. There were two times I actually laughed out loud. I enjoyed the in-yer-face 3D Marijuana smoke but that antic was dropped too quickly. Even though I don’t smoke pot some of the stuff was clever while other times it was just like "just who do they think they’re kidding?" Although even when I smoked pot I didn’t like stoner humor it was just insulting. There’s stuff in here that I think if you told me about I’d just shrug and shun.

The hit and miss material comes at you like a smorgasbord allowing you to decide which bit is funny (or not) but like a cafeteria line it keeps moving. There’s a rip on occupy Wall Street, a ton of dick jokes and Neil Patrick Harris, referred to with super star status as NPH, is (according to this scenario) only pretending to be gay so he can secretly score chicks and remain a huge babe magnet. There’s an egg chucking 3D massacre a waffle-bot toy that allows a lot of R2 D2 and Terminator jokes, Evil Russian mob boss/dad Elias Koteas, Danny “Machete” Trejo as disgruntled father-in-law, terrible use of Thomas Lennon(Reno 911’s Lt. Dangle) an even worse casting choice of Amir Blumenfeld as the nerd with glasses (I seriously can’t tell if the character or the actor is more annoying) Penn’s in-joke White house job is poked fun at,
But there’s one antic that is so over-the-edge wrong that I don’t know anyone who won’t take issue with it: the scenes of a toddler getting high on weed, cocaine and ecstasy.
Keeping in the Christmas spirit H&K’S 3D X-mas wraps the movie in a weed soaked ribbon and bow, too touching for its own good. It’s like a hallmark card stoner morality code, which defeats the purpose of the entire dementedly satirical gross-out jamboree we’ve been invited to. There’s actually a reindeer named Vixen?? Jeez!
On Blitzen…on Trapper…

A Very Harold and Kumar 3d Christmas
Starring Kal Penn, John Cho, Neil Patrick Harris, Thomas Lennon, Danny Trejo
Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson
Rated R
2 stars