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Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (published internationally under the title Harold and Kumar get the Munchies) is a 2004 stoner movie that explores stereotypes, especially racial, in American culture. The plot revolves around the two title characters, who decide to go to White Castle, with John Cho as Harold Lee and Kal Penn as Kumar Patel.
The film was written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, and directed by Danny Leiner. It also has appearances by Paula Garcés, Anthony Anderson, Ethan Embry, Jamie Kennedy, Christopher Meloni, Ryan Reynolds, Shaun Majumder, Eddie Kaye Thomas, and Neil Patrick Harris (as himself).
The White Castle featured in the movie is a fictional franchise in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Cherry Hill was chosen because it enabled the movie producers to shoot the film over a more substantial and varied landscape.
Racial stereotyping
Unlike other films in the teen comedy/stoner genre (see Dude, Where's My Car? and Dazed and Confused), Harold and Kumar also heavily deals with the issues of racial discrimination and stereotyping, particularly amongst Asian males in modern day America.
Harold is an extremely intelligent Korean investment banker whose current job impresses even the Korean population at Princeton University. He is constantly faced with the stereotype of the intelligent and nerdy Asian guy, but at the same time, fears being called a Twinkie by his Korean friends. It's explained that a Twinkie is, like the snack food, yellow on the outside, white on the inside.
Kumar is of Indian heritage, who like his friend Harold is extremely intelligent, especially within the field of medicine. Unfortunately, Kumar also has the fear of becoming a living stereotype and, despite having incredible MCAT scores, refuses to attend medical school offering the explaination "Just because you're hung like a moose, doesn't mean you have to do porn."
To juxtapose the serious-yet-subtle undertones dealing with racial tolerance, we also have Harold and Kumar's Jewish equivalents and across-the-hall friends, Rosenburg and Goldstein who couldn't be prouder of their heritage. Rosenburg wears a skull cap, they smoke pot from a shofar and even speak like old Jewish men, despite being in their early 20's.
It's also interesting to note that all the "enemies" (the med school dean, the Extreme dudes, the guys at the office, all the police officers and campus security guards, the diarrhea twins, the "business hippy" and even Neil Patrick Harris) in the movie (except for possibly Kumar's father) are white, and all "allies" (Maria, Rosenburg, Goldstein, the guy at the Burger Shack, the convenience store clerk, Cindy Kim and company, the guy in prison with Harold and Freakshow) are "coloured" or, in Freakshow's case, fanatically religious and covered in heinous boils.
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