Harold Lee is stuck in a low-level investment banking job, overworked and definitely under-appreciated by his colleagues, who aren’t shy about handing off their own work for him to finish over the weekend. To make matters worse, he can’t find the courage to talk to his pretty neighbor from down the hall at home. While Harold toils away, his best friend, Kumar Patel, is doing everything he can to avoid the real world, valiantly upholding his carefree partying ways while making half-hearted attempts to gain admittance to medical school and follow in his family’s footsteps. Seeking a break from their realities, these two likeable underdogs unwind in front of their TV for a Friday night smoke-out session, which results in an incredible case of the “munchies.” Catching sight of a commercial for White Castle and their mouthwatering hamburgers, Harold and Kumar discover their true mission in life (or at least their mission for this one Friday night) -- they must set out on an unbelievable all-night quest across their home state of New Jersey in search of a White Castle restaurant to satisfy their cravings. What follows is a comic roller-coaster ride that takes the duo on a twisted tour of the Garden State -- from its finest academic institutions to its scariest backwoods territories, from shady fast-food establishments to, just maybe…the holy grail of White Castle. Along the way, Harold and Kumar meet an array of crazy characters (not to mention one rabid raccoon and an escaped cheetah on the run) and overcome some outrageous obstacles. But with every step of the journey, they somehow manage to keep their eyes on the tasty prize -- learning more than they bargained for about themselves and each other in the process.

This movie is a shame as it had such vast potential to be incredibly funny but rather it falls way short of this lofty goal. The movie does have its moments that will have you laughing but for the most part they are just too far and few between. I really like Danny Leiner’s work as it has a lot of biting wit evidenced in such films like Dude Where’s My Car? but this movie just seemed like he was banking on the success of that movie rather than creating something new and just as funny. Heck, they even had to drop a reference of Dude Where’s My Car? into the movie as well as the trailers. The movie is just your basic run of the mill stoner movie that does not do anything special rather it just falls onto the clichés of its predecessors and mucks its way through most of the movie. There are a few truly new and inspirational moments, like the cheetah for example that make the movie worth seeing just for those few moments but they also make you wish they had tried to do more and to capture those moments more often. I am sure the crowd that this movie is generated for, those of the teen persuasion that enjoy such low humor types of movies, will find it hilarious but for me I just expected more and did not get it. The bathroom humor was ridiculous as well and just turned me off of the movie at times, wait for the video release.
2 stars out of 5