Review: A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas 3D (2011) again proves that the first film's brilliance was a fluke.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas 3D
2011
90 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is arguably the best comedy of the prior decade.  It's laugh-out-loud funny, but also filled with intelligent characters engaging in outlandish, but almost-plausible adventures in search of a most simple pleasure (a hamburger).  It was crude, but not stupid about its raunch, and it created a wonderful 'this is America' tapestry that helped make it one of the finest films about race/ethnicity relations in modern cinema. Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is every bit as lousy as most of us expected the first film to be.  It's aimless, painfully unfunny, openly stupid, and trading in the sort of stock storytelling conventions ("Oh, that girl I dated for a few months in college is THE ONE who I must win back!") that the original avoided.  More importantly, it's outright immoral in how it claims political topicality but sells the three biggest post-9/11 lies around (there are no innocent men in Gitmo, the post 9/11 abuses are the result of a few bad apples, and George W. Bush is really just 'one of us').  For better or worse, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas isn't as offensive as the first sequel, but it's still a shockingly lazy, uninspired affair.  It feels cheap and constrained, with only a handful of laughs and a narrative that sees fit to mostly replicate jokes from the first film.  It's not as aggressively bad as the first sequel, but mere mediocrity is not something to aspire to.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas gets a red-band trailer.

While this is just a touch spoilery, it does seem to be an improvement over the wretched second picture.  It's obvious that this franchise is going ever-more surreal, leaving behind the quasi-realism (stoned jaguars aside) of the first film.  One thing that does impress me is the continued presence of Paula Garcés.  She was basically Harold's 'prize to be won' in the first film, while she barely merited a cameo in the second, yet she again appears here, apparently now as Harold's wife.  In an age when male-centric franchises treat their female characters like disposables to be replaced by the newest flavor of the month in the next installment, it is refreshing that this series has bothered to maintain continuity (the Kumar's would-be love interest from Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Danneel Ackles, also makes a return appearance).  But on a different note, not only is Christopher Meloni apparently absent from this go-around, but his identical twin Elias Koteas is listed on the IMDB cast page as "Sergei Katsov".  Me thinks that Meloni was unavailable so the producers went for the logical replacement.  Anyway, this one drops on November 4th, and I can't imagine it will be worse than the first sequel, although hoping for something as brilliant as the initial installment is a fool's errand.

Scott Mendelson   

Warner Bros. moves Man of Steel to June 14th, 2013. NOT July 19th, 2013!

In what I guess you could call breaking news, Warner Bros. has announced that they are moving Man of Steel (ie - Zach Snyder's Superman film that seems to be based on Superman: Birthright) from December 2012 to June 14th, 2013.  What's shocking is not that the film is being moved (it is apparently being tinkered with at the screenwriting stage), but that Warner is not moving it into its favorite mega-release date, which in this case would be July 19th, 2013.  For those who came in late, a brief history of Warner's favorite weekend:  It started in July 2007. For, among other reasons, a sense that the fifth Harry Potter film would benefit from a release date close to the release of the seventh and final book, Warner Bros. slotted Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to open on Wednesday, July 18th. It grossed $44 million on that first Wednesday and ended up with $139 million over the first five days ($77 million of that from Fri-Sun). Despite being released in the summer (where Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban ended with a series-low gross of $248 million) and being based on arguably the worst book in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix ended up with $293 million, becoming the highest-grossing Harry Potter sequel yet released at the time.

Thoughts on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Meloni and Hargitay step down.

For about six years, from season 2 to season 8, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit was a pretty terrific procedural drama.  While people are understandably skittish about the subject matter, the show is generally less graphically violent than any of the CSI shows, let alone something like Criminal Minds.  But somewhere around season 9-ish, the show started getting silly... really silly.  The show went from a somewhat restrained 'just the facts, mam' procedural to a nonstop barrage of 'This isn't just any other case!!"  John Munch (Richard Belzer) was more-or-less written out of the show, Fin' Tutuola (Ice-T) became relatively scarce, and the series went from being a genuine ensemble cop show to the Benson and Stabler show, complete with 'will they or won't they?' teases and oodles of needlessly personal subplots.  Every season had at least one 'PLEASE give Mariska Hargitay an Emmy!' episode, which usually resulted in a season-low point (SEE Benson get raped in jail!)  that actually snagged her that Emmy nomination.