View from the Couch DVD reviews February 14 2009

This week, CL Charlotte film critic Matt Brunson reviews stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the Larry McMurtry classic Lonesome Dove, and British coming-of-age story Son of Rambow, which first caught our attention last spring at the Atlanta Film Festival.

HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY (2008). 2004’s Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle looks better with each passing year, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay won’t be enjoying a similar critical ascension in the future. That’s largely because the satire is less subversive and more overt, meaning that what you see is basically what you get. Kal Penn and John Cho are again an engaging team, and here, the plot requires their characters to get mistaken for terrorists, leading to an interrogation by a moronic Homeland Security honcho (Rob Corddry) who decides to send them to Guantanamo Bay to enjoy a steady diet of “cock-meat sandwiches.” Read the rest here.

(Photo by Jaimie Trueblood/New Line Cinema)