jon hurwitz & hayden schlossberg's HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY (2008)

catching a dollar showing on a whim, it's hard not to wish i'd chosen to see H&K the night i grimaced through Baby Mama; there's something special about the rarefied breed of comedy that attempts very little and ends up succeeding enormously on its own terms. like the original Harold & Kumar, ...Escape From Guantanamo Bay treads good-naturedly through the episodic capers of its titular stoners, from a plane to Amsterdam (it picks up nearly immediately where the last one left off) to Gitmo to the American South and finally to Crawford, Texas, where Harold & Kumar share a puff or two with what may long stand as the friendliest portrayal of Dubya in a feature film. it's a thoroughly dumb movie, but also disarmingly likable and even occasionally clever; its satire manages to be at once gentle and over-the-top, and it finds surprisingly genial ways to ridicule both racial prejudice and the fever pitch of America's war on terror. it is what it is, and i wouldn't send anyone in unprepared for that, but if you're willing to go along with it Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is one of the funniest films of the year so far.