HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE

Nothing less than the greatest product-placement movie of all time, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is also disarmingly friendly. While following the Bill & Ted and Road Trip teen-comedy formula, it unexpectedly demonstrates what could be called cultural bliss. A good, healthy part is the idealization of junk food as a form of the American pursuit of happiness. Here the pursuit is made by Harold (John Cho), a young Korean and his East Indian friend Kumar (Kal Penn), a wannabe slacker. These roommates defy their shared legacy of humorless Asian intelligence. Smoking pot and hunting for munchies doesn't degrade them; it frees them from stereotype.

Call it subversive, whatever; it's much preferable—and is deep-down superior to—an odious privileged-juvenile delinquency movie like Better Luck Tomorrow, which disgraced the real reasons ethnic American teens seek to belong to some all-American ideal. That film was yet another unimaginative indie retread of Mean Streets, glorifying thuggery without a critique of the real-life misery that gives rise to anti-social behavior. But Danny Leiner, who previously directed Dude, Where's My Car?, specializes in a low-down authentic geniality. Harold's in love with Maria (Paula Garces), the intimidating, lovely Latin girl down the hall; Kumar's in love with freedom. That's why he craves getting high—on grass or on a hang-glider. Finally reaching their white tile El Dorado, they stuff themselves like gourmands, letting a ketchup packet drip into a mouthful of crinkled fries. In Minority Report and The Terminal, Spielberg sparks a thinking viewer's political awareness by evoking the contemporary capitalist reality of our inundation with products. He captures the environment that necessitates moral choice and human connection. Harold and Kumar's jaunt is surrealistically full of similar dilemmas. They fake out authority and bigotry with splendid physical comedy. This movie enshrines the right to indulge disreputable fun as every American's—represented by those demotic sliders and belly-bombers. This film recalled a real-life nighttime road trip to White Castle, when a friend put a boxed burger in front of a sleeping homeless man, who awoke to discover the unexpected gift then guiltlessly chowed down.