Craggus’ Christmas Countdown Day 19: A Very Harold And Kumar Christmas (2011)

If stoner comedies are your kind of thing, crammed with inappropriate humour, festive dick jokes and gratuitously over the top antics, then Craggus’ Christmas Countdown has got you covered. Picking up six years after “Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay”, this instalment finds the pair estranged and Harold established as a successful banking executive complete with toadying subordinate and bland, mild-mannered friend.

Determined to deliver the perfect Christmas for his wife and her visiting family, headed by foreboding patriarch Mr Perez (“Machete”‘s Danny Trejo), Harold has spared no expense in creating a lavish winter wonderland at his home. Meanwhile, Kumar has flunked out and sunk fully into a slacker lifestyle however, when a mysterious parcel is delivered to Kumar’s apartment but addressed to Harold, the two are reunited. Unfortunately, their reunion results in the accidental destruction of Mr Perez’s hand reared Christmas tree so the pair, with their respective new pals in tow, set out on an increasingly madcap quest to replace the tree and save Christmas!

Both John Cho and Kal Penn have gone on to bigger, better and more credible things since the first Harold & Kumar movie so it’s great to see them return for this vulgar, way over the top festive sequel. The humour is both scatological and scatter-gun, with no opportunity to take the low road left unexplored, and there are cameos aplenty from the bit part players of previous outings.

This time, the pair encounter Ukrainian Gangsters, coked-out toddlers, roofied egg-nog, the real Santa Claus (who they accidentally shoot) and a resurrected Neil Patrick Harris, who viciously skewers his public persona in his best cameo of the franchise so far. The film takes pot shots at all of the conventions and clichés of Christmas movies in general and even makes a couple of sly digs at the 3D format the film was shot in.

Suffice to say, this is another one to avoid if you’re easily offended but otherwise there’s a lot to enjoy here in a rude, crude and shameless way. And if you don’t want a WaffleBot of your very own after seeing this, then there may be no hope for you at all.

8/10