By Harold & Kumar? You mean to tell me a stoner comedy threequel is part of the Nick’s Flixmas lineup? And it’s part of the Twelve Days of Flixmas (the twelve best Christmas films ever)? Why yes because I just think it’s that entertaining. As a spoof on the genre, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas knocks it out of the park. It may be as terrible of a stoner comedy as all of the others, but there’s always been a certain naive charm to the series.
Maybe it’s the main duo’s personable nature (as compared to other stoner movie duos like Method Man/Redman or Snoop Dogg/Wiz Khalifa) or number of hits outweighing the misses, or even making NPH a thing again, but Harold & Kumar is just a good trilogy. It’s not great, as when it falls it falls hard, but it’s still enjoyable. Consider day 18 of Nick’s Flixmas to be a little palette cleanser.
[Nick’s Flixmas is a 25 day celebration of films Nick watches every Christmas! Nick will do some analysis, review, and just generally walk down memory lane. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the ride. Merry Flixmas!]
3D Christmas is a delightful parody of Christmas movies. Every situation is exaggerated (most of them sexually), 3D is ridiculed as the stupid thing it is, and then when you think you might have lost faith in the film, they go “claymation.” In the threequel, Harold and Kumar have gone their separate ways after the events of Escape from Guantanamo Bay with Harold marrying his sweetheart Maria and going on to financial success, leaving Kumar to smoke pot alone in his dingy apartment. I guess part of the reason the film works as a Christmas film despite its intention not to, is the heart at the center. The film is just about Kumar trying to reconnect with his best friend. Then as the story rolls on, you get the same antics you got with the others just with a little more Christmas spirit.
But then again, you can easily tire of Harold & Kumar. 3D Christmas tends to overstay its welcome as it runs some gags into the ground. NPH becomes some new level of jerk as the joke loses its inherent humor now that he’s become a character rather than an outrageous cameo. And there are lot more misses here than there are in previous iterations. It’s one of those sequels that really does need to exist.
But it does, and since it took place around Christmas and I couldn’t find my copy of Die Hard yet, here we are. Don’t smoke marijuana, kids. Drugs are bad, m’kay?
Tomorrow on Nick’s Flixmas, the diehardiest Christmas film in the lineup, Die Hard!