Thursday 7 March 2013

Every generation has its special Christmas film: A Very Harold And Kumar 3D Christmas


A Very Harold And Kumar 3D Christmas

It takes a lot for a film to genuinely shock me.  I found I Spit On Your Grave grueling but not shocking.  I barely raised an eyebrow during The Human Centipede 1 & 2.  Kill Keith shocked me but that was more because I was shocked someone thought it was a good idea.  Salo shocked me.  Maybe A Serbian Film.  Like I said, it takes a lot for a film to shock me. 

But I was genuinely shocked when A Very Harold And Kumar 3D Christmas was awarded an 18 certificate.  An 18?  For a good-natured stoner comedy?  Has the world gone mad?  Has our Big Brother/Nanny State really gotten that bad?  Then again, it may be the only American mainstream Christmas film you’ll see featuring a cocaine and ecstasy-crazed toddler, a man’s penis frozen to a pole and jolly old Saint Nick getting shot in the face.  And if that offends you, you’re a spineless jellyfish who really should be sitting in an afternoon matinee screening of Arthur Christmas.    

Possibly the best Christmas film since Richard Donner’s 1988 Bill Murray-vehicle Scrooged (Remember when Bill Murray was funny?), A Very Harold And Kumar 3D Christmas reunites the stoner buddies who, since escaping from Guantanamo Bay in the last movie, have become estranged.  Investment banker Harold (John Cho) is now married to the beautiful Maria (Paula Garces) and living in the suburbs, Kumar is still perpetually stoned and living in the apartment they used to share.  The former best buds haven’t spoken in years.

When a mysterious package arrives at the apartment for Harold, Kumar decides to deliver it on Christmas Eve kicking off a chain of events which will see Harold’s hostile Hispanic gangster father-in-law’s (Danny Trejo) prized Christmas Tree reduced to ash and the two former BFFs rediscovering their lost friendship as they spend a wild night searching Manhattan for a replacement tree. 

In the process they’ll be drugged, beaten, kidnapped by Ukrainian gangsters, chased by an evil, claymation snowman of Godzilla-like proportions, forced to dance in a Broadway show with Neil Patrick Harris and accidentally shoot Santa Claus in the face while Harold’s strait-laced friend Todd’s (Thomas Lennon) infant daughter will end up hoovering up more drugs (weed, coke, ecstasy) than a Grateful Dead roadie.

Pant-wettingly, unrepentantly funny and bursting with the most outrageous 3D gags ever to almost poke your eye out A Very Harold And Kumar 3D Christmas is cheerfully transgressive.  Pot smoke swirls around the audience, all manner of things fly towards your face (hot waffle batter, a burning Christmas tree, semen, snowballs, eggs, Neil Patrick Harris’ hat), a snake-like claymation penis practically parts your hair, Avatar jokes. 

But while it’s hilariously vulgar, like any good Christmas film, a sentimental heart beats at the centre of A Very Harold And Kumar 3D Christmas; you just need to unwrap a sleigh-load of dick jokes to get to it.  While the set-pieces become increasingly demented and ridiculous, the rekindling of Harold and Kumar’s bromance is genuinely touching.  And just as it threatens to become too saccharine along comes another dick joke, some naked nuns, a toddler rubbing coke into her gums, Neil Patrick Harris. 

Ah, Neil Patrick Harris.  Gleefully offensive, hilariously self-mocking, NPH (as he refers to himself onscreen) once again plays a parallel universe version of himself that’s a drug-crazed, misogynist horndog though this time he gets his own Busby Berkeley-style song and dance number before he and real-life boyfriend David Burtka mercilessly send their relationship up, both masquerading as straight men who despise each other pretending to be gay monogamous lovers in order to further there careers and pick up chicks (typical exchange after kissing for the press: “What did I tell you about using tongue?” “You told me to make it realistic.” “Yeah, realistic! Not f***ing gay as sh*t!”).  NPH’s cameo as his pantomime self almost makes up for The Smurfs movie.  Almost.

Ultimately though, the film works because of John Cho and Kal Penn.  Since the first two films they’ve both grown up, grown older, found success.  Cho recently cemented his action man status as an ass-kicking Mr Sulu in the rebooted Star Trek, Penn found success in TV’s House before quitting acting for the White House where he’s Obama’s Associate Director of Public Engagement (he took a hiatus for A Very Harold And Kumar 3D Christmas).  But stick a blunt in their hands and the old magic is back.

Absurd, surreal and gloriously funny, A Very Harold And Kumar 3D Christmas may not be It’s A Wonderful Life but then again James Stewart never had to rip his frozen penis from a metal pole or feed a toddler ecstasy.  Every generation has its special Christmas film.    

David Watson


Director
Todd Strauss-Schulson
Writers
Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg
Cast
John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Danny Trejo, Paula Garces, Elias Koteas, Amir Blumenfeld, Thomas Lennon
Country
USA
Running time
89 minutes
Year
2011
Certificate
18

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