Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004, USA, Danny Liefer) AKA Dude, Where’s My Bong?

Okay, so you wanna know about this movie about a couple of stoners? First, I’d recommend that you take a look at the title. The film’s all about Harold. And Kumar. And their going to White Castle. And it is one helluva mess of a movie. Fortunately, it is one helluva funny one, too.
John Cho, who is terrific in Better Luck Tomorrow, but almost certainly better known for his participation in the American Pie films, is perfectly cast as the uptight, nerdy investment banker Harold, put upon and taken advantage of by his (Caucasian) colleagues. Kal Penn (Van Wilder) gives a breakout performance in the plum role of the brilliant, outgoing slacker Kumar, who will do just about anything to avoid attending medical school and following in his father’s and brother’s footsteps. Cho and Penn play off each other with the sort of comfortable ease and crackerjack comic timing that you would only expect to find in seasoned duos. When Harold and Kumar get ripped and hit the road in search of the Great American Burger, the chemistry of the leads, as well as the motif of travel, at first reminded me in a most curious way of the Hope/Crosby road pictures, but is more clearly in the bong-toting spirit of Cheech and Chong.

Now this is hardly a perfect film, but such is the nature of such episodic comedy fare, where I’m generally content if more than half of the skit-like scenes have a decent payoff. So while I could do w/o the toilet scene and the animatronic racoon and the CGI cheetah, still and all, when you slip past this inferior material, you'll find a movie that is funny far more often than it flops, and which—more importantly—comically challenges the Myth of the American Melting Pot. Harold and Kumar (and any other people of colour) are treated openly as second (or third) class citizens who should be thankful that they’re even allowed to breath good old American air. Midst all the mayhem and depravity, Harold and Kumar makes a pretty pointed commentary about the whole sense of Anglo/Caucasian entitlement that often forces those outside this inner circle, such as people of colour, to harbour bleak prospects when in pursuit of a bit of happiness or searching for their fair share of the American Dream. The humiliation and degradation suffered by Harold and Kumar in their long day’s journey into night is all part of the process of proving themselves greater than their adversaries, and provides the film with its payoff when they finally get to kick some dumb whitey ass. White Castle is Harold and Kumar’s grail, the lads will not settle for anything but the best burgers available. Their quest for the perfect burger is a symbol for nothing less than the immigrants desire to have equal access to the corridors of power in America. Leiner's film is a celebration of the rights of all people from all races, creeds and beliefs to have equal access to the best-damned burger Americans can fry up!

Yeah, I better fess up. I'm one of three critics in the known universe who really dug the way Dude, Where's My Car? gave up some serious lovin' for the whole stoner culture, and now here we have the same director (Danny Leiner) giving it up for more of life's marginalized heroes, Harold the Asian nerd and Kumar the underachieving East Indian. So, this is a clear caveat before I declare my adoration of Leiner’s ouevre, as I am beginning to get that tingly sensation of falling in love with a director's vision. Now, if I can only convince him to get rid of the whole fake animal schtick.

Score: 79/100

Going the Distance (2004, USA, Mark Griffiths) AKA It’s a Bland, Dull, Dumb Movie

Ugh. Okay, before I begin to bury it, allow me to offer up a few words of praise for the banality that is Going to Distance. In a film of such dubious merits, I reckon we have to be thankful for such small mercies as these.

Going the Distance, which is shot on Vancouver Island, B.C., is also actually set in Canada, and makes reference to Tofino and Toronto, Montreal and Newfoundland. Parenthetically, as an island resident, spotting the different locales used to represent various cross-Canada settings is one of the film’s few viewing pleasures. Also, the film’s finale is set during Much Music’s Video Awards and features performances by Canadian artists Avril Lavigne and Swollen Members.

Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) is still working. Of all the cameos in a desperate attempt to inject the film with some energy and edginess, his yellow-toothed, shotgun totin’ bible-thumping prairie hick is a singular standout. Parenthetically, let me give Avril some career advice: Don’t give up your day job, grrrl.

Joanne Kelly, who plays a guitar strumming Newfie hitchhiker, is awfully cute.

Umm…Did I mention the soundtrack, which features decent talent like Jet and The Darkness, isn’t altogether retched?

Now, the laundry list of this film’s problems is far too long to burden you with, so I’ll content myself by focusing on a few of the film’s most egregious banalities.

Going the Distance makes a token effort to resurrect the infectious spirit of teen comedies past, such as Animal House, and cross-breed it with the road comedies of the sixties, such as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World (heck, this sucker’s not even in the league of that film’s infinitely mediocre remake Rat Race), while grafting a terribly tepid romance onto the mix in order, I’m assuming, to appeal to both genders in the teen market. However, the result is so calculated, cynical and pedestrian that it completely and utterly subverts the anarchic energy of its progenitors that it pretends to be channeling.

Not only is every cast member nearly a decade too old to be playing the parts of graduating high school students, but the actors seem to have been chosen for their eerie resemblance to established Hollywood actors. The aforementioned Kelly, with her scrumptious overbite and milky eyes, bears more than a passing resemblance to Live Tyler. Surfer dude Shawn Roberts looks like a stunt double for Seann William Scott (Dude, Where’s My Car?) while his stoner buddie Ryan Belleville is a dead ringer for Giovanni Ribisi (Lost in Translation). Are they trying to fool us into believing that there are some actual minor Hollywood-type actors at work here?

The gags, from the chain around the rear axel (Blues Brothers) to the dildo scene (Me, Myself and Irene) have pretty much all been copped from the films that the filmmakers were "inspired" by.

Elevating the sort of adolescent behaviour we see throughout Going the Distance into a life-guiding philosophy that sits in opposition to both the tedious mores of middle class society as well as the laid back, dropped out retro-hippy dippy silliness of the protagonist’s parents COULD have been funny, if attempted with the sort of joyous abandon that truly rebellious filmmakers would have brought to the film. Unfortunately, Going the Distance is helmed by Mark Griffiths, whose approach to this material is about as conventional and derivative as you might expect from the man who brought us Hard Bodies. And Hard Bodies 2. Not to mention Beethoven’s 5^th.

 

You know, as I was trying to maintain my interest level during the screening, I thought to myself that I was thankful that they had stopped making these films in the 1980s. Then I realized this way just self-delusion, and that it was just that I had stopped watching them in the 80s. I suspect that Going the Distance will set me up for another couple of decades.

Score: 44/100

The Grapes of Wrath (1940, USA, John Ford) AKA Okie Doke

Like a grand Biblical epic, John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath documents the massive Depression-era exodus of Oklahoma farmers as they led their families from the devastation of the dust bowl to the illusory promise of prosperity in a Californian Eden. Based largely on the first-hand research that novelist and California native John Steinbeck did before writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath captured the essence of the experiences of the dispossessed and in the process stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy. Both Oklahomans and Californians alike complained of how they were depicted, while landowners and bankers howled about the novel’s supposed biases. Director John Ford, whose Irish lineage gave him strong empathy for the displaced, suffering and starving victims of the Great Depression, shrugged off their complaints. Ford was perhaps the perfect director for The Grapes of Wrath. Not only do his films often holler with rage at the world’s injustices, but they also ring with an honest devotion to the integrity of each individual in this messed up world. His affection for the distinctly American value of rugged individualism, and his great eye for concise compositions also helped make Ford the ideal candidate to tackle John Steinbeck’s finest novel.

As the film opens, the forces of universe seem to be aligned against the Joad family, and pretty much every Okie we meet. Elemental forces of nature combine with those of men driven by the profit motive to rob the Joads, and thousands of other families like them, of their homes, livelihoods and lives. It appears that nothing and no body can help them, with religion offering little more than an empty consolation (Pa’s eulogy is written on a page torn from the family Bible). Ford utilitizes the iconography of the Western throughout—the wide open vistas, the ragged determination of his put-upon characters—to infuse the film with a timeless sensibility, and accentuate the monumental task facing these feisty and resilient salts of the earth. And vital to the film’s sense of authenticity is the cinematography of Gregg Toland. Anticipating his own rightly-lauded deep focus photography for Citizen Kane, Toland capably captures the desolate Depression era imagery, mirroring the famous pictures of Horace Bristol and Dorothea Lange. Occasionally, Ford loosens Toland’s camera from its tripod, as in our first trip through a Californian Hooverville, and the effect of the long tracking shot, with its suddenly subjective p-o-v, is stunning in its sudden departure from the film’s established mis-en-scene, drawing us into the squalor as effortlessly as a river’s current. It is hard to imagine the film in the hands of another d.p. retaining this sense of veracity and visceral punch.

However, what really solidifies the greatness of The Grapes of Wrath is Ford’s (and Steinbeck’s) ability to blend the personal and political without causing damage to either characters or themes. This is particularly true of the central characters of Tom and Ma Joad. Undoubtedly the most famous speech in this fine film is delivered near its end. Facing a lifetime in prison for standing up to some crooked cops in order to protect a friend from their batons, Tom Joad realizes he must leave his family in order to protect them. But he reassures his Ma that he’ll never really be gone. "I’ll be everywhere you can look. Whenever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Whenever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. And when people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build, I’ll be there too."

Tom, in what is surely Henry Fonda’s greatest and career-defining role, recites these lines while staring off into some infinite point in the horizon. It marks his final awakening, as he is finally able to see clearly how the troubles of others in the world reside with him. "A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody." No longer living separately from the world around him, but rather acknowledging how he belongs to it, Tom has moved from the patriarchal values of acquisitiveness, avarice and isolation to the nurturing matriarchal values of caring and community. And while there is a hint of the fanatic’s determination in his eyes’ gleam, it is not the fanaticism of desperation, but rather that of commitment to his fellow man. The triumph of Tom is in how he hasn’t allowed the world to beat him into submission. Instead, he’s found his life’s mission.

And while Tom’s rousing and affecting speech is the film’s signature note, there are a couple of other moments, one at film’s end, and another hidden a few scenes earlier, that speak eloquently of the ills besetting contemporary America, as well as hinting of a roadmap for healing. First, when Ma is trying to convince Tom to help her keep the family she notes how "[w]e was always one thing. We was the family, kind of whole and clear. But now we ain’t clear no more. They ain’t nothin’ that keeps us clear." If this doesn’t speak to people in a nation that seems to have lost its way, one that is struggling to rediscover the values upon which it was founded, I’m not sure that anything can. And finally, Ma notes at film’s end that, "Man lives - well, in jerks. Baby born or somebody dies, that's a jerk. With a woman, it's all one flow, like a stream - little eddies, little waterfalls - but the river, it goes right on." That a film made by one of Hollywood’s most masculine directors would urge us to embrace "feminine" values in order to find our salvation is just one of the wonders of this timeless classic.

Score: 92/100