HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY [R]

Holding up for ridicule the stone-cold silliness of our blind faith in post-9/11 legislation like the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, this extreme road comedy, a sequel to the 2004 stoner favorite Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, is a rapid-fire Cheech & Chong meet The Blues Brothers in South Park kind of envelope-pusher. In it, best buds Harold Lee (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) find themselves detained in Cuba for an alleged hijacking attempt while en route to the amateur pharmacologist’s providence of Amsterdam. Naturally, they escape, as the movie is not called Harold & Kumar Are Routinely Humiliated, Stripped Of Their Basic Human Rights And Detained Indefinitely At Guantanamo Bay (though don’t be surprised if some Middle Eastern countries actually release it with that title). High jinks and social satire ensue. And plenty of low jinks and gross-outs.

Penn, who is now a (most welcome) part of the cast of Fox’s hit medical drama “House,” keeps it all moving along. He’s got super timing and a natural charisma (though even that did not save the grotesquely cheesy spoof that was Epic Movie). His hyper-intelligent would-be doctor is a THC-tweaked Ferris Bueller, and we want to see him and unflinching straight man Cho get into shit, just so we can watch them get out again. The supporting cast includes “Daily Show” correspondent Rob Corddry, who is hilariously stupid as a dim-bulb FBI agent, and lovely giant funny girl Missi Pyle (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as a backwoods Barbie. Neil Patrick Harris (”How I Met Your Mother”) returns as a riotously funny drug-craving, sex-obsessed version of Neil Patrick Harris (and fans should stay through the end credits). Special kudos go to James Adomian, late-night TV host Craig Ferguson’s go-to guy to play the President. Here, in an extended and pivotal sketch, he simultaneously pulls off silly, serious and surreal, which, like the movie itself, comes across as much more than just an easy, short-sighted gimmick. And any movie that can support its entire weight on the geeky brilliance of a climactic love poem called “The Square Root Of Three” cannot be all that brain-dead.

Ultimately, the movie is: Coarse (and that’s intended) and very often, naughty (fraught with drugs and nudity and sitting on the potty); Disrespectful, brassy, crude - it’s all these things (with pride), patently ridiculous and flip…and rank…and snide. And written with a bong in reach (as far as we can tell), but, despite this laundry list, it’s funny as all hell.••• –Robert Newton