A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

I had minimal expectations for this. The first Harold & Kumar was lightning in a bottle; a dumb movie with a bonkers presentation that rose above itself to be mindless fun. The second movie showed the formula was already maxed out with the first movie. So I’ll give props to this movie for maintaining a fun spirit and having that redemptive arc of self-realization that the best Christmas stories have while still being amusing. Harold has retreated from the moxie he found in himself into anodyne suburban complacency, while Kumar has retreated from any personal growth and maturity because Harold outgrew him. Their parallel arcs bring them into being fuller people and better friends. I like that. Unfortunately, what this movie also shows is what we already knew with the previous movie in the trilogy: the overall formula of a zany and frankly supernatural set of misadventures was funny once and has struggled to match itself in the following films. That’s because Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle worked for two reasons: it was fresh and OTT in a weird, new way at the time, and because the epic scope of the journey ran counter to the stakes. A life or death journey for a fast food burger is so preposterous, it’s fun. This movie (and the one before it) forgot that and just thought “go bigger”, not realizing it was the disproportionate weight of quest and the prize that made things work. Harold trying to impress his disapproving father-in-law and save family Christmas feels like serious stuff. Kumar having a crisis of self-confidence and maturity after getting very big news (his estranged girlfriend is pregnant) is serious. It’s too serious for the zany, madcap antics of the movie. The balance is just off, so it’s never as funny as it should be. Also, the late 00’s and early 10’s 3D pandering is PAINFUL when it isn’t in 3D. The movie was designed to have all sorts of things fly at the screen, and in 2D, it’s dumb as hell. Worse, it looks like the 3D was applied in post and not filmed that way, which affects the color palate of everything. Egg yolks and taxis have a green hue to them. That’s just not right. Overall, it’s a step up from the last H&K movie, and a fun little Christmas romp. But it misses what made the first movie work so well and settles for okay.