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deftly handled with a subtlety that's limited in a movie that intends to shock in the way this one does. One particular scene where the leads are trapped in a cubicle in the ladies toilets only to be subjected to listening to their potential dates playing a game of noisy "battle shits" is hilarious not so much for the gross nature of the game being played (I'll let your imagination work it out!) but more the fevered reaction of the two boys having to listen to the stakes being increased as well as the smell in the loo! The sequence involving the multi-boiled car-mechanic "Freak Show" and his promiscuous wife is inspired and guaranteed to get you laughing. It may be viewing through the fingers at times with a decent supply of cringe worthiness but it's beautifully conceived and expertly executed.

Where the movie doesn't do so well is in its depiction of racism. It tries to get the message across quite early on when the duo drive pass a couple of Asian men getting beaten up by a gang of white males. It's clear that the violence meted out is because of racial differences and the message is compounded later on when our heroes get banged up in jail by a bigoted cop only for the black boy that's already resident in one of the cells to get a kicking as the pair escape, told to run by a black man who has just been arrested whilst looking back helplessly at the hopelessly outnumbered inmate. There doesn't seem to be any purpose to the inclusion of the scenes other than to say that racism is still an everyday occurrence in the heartlands of the US but it would have helped to have seen some kind of consequences in at least one of the scenes other than the one in which Harold and Kumar steal the truck of a gang of racist surfers who have been persecuting an Asian store owner. The original title of the movie gives an analogous clue as to the underlying motive for the plot with the two, all-American immigrant descendants striving to find the Holy Grail of a "white castle" which translates as a metaphor for the general acceptance of all colours, race and creeds across the United States of today.

Inserting any actor to play themselves always runs the risk of audiences abroad not identifying with the person concerned and "Neil Patrick Harris" playing "Neil Patrick Harris" left me a little mystified as I wasn't sure who he was. It seems that he does have an extensive acting CV but he just wasn't someone well known to me and so that particular joke was lost. Some of the effects

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