Like Dude, Where’s My Car?, this film’s humor depends on a string of sight and sound gags. The rest of the film tracks their absurd adventures, including encounters with rabid raccoons and racist cops, and a notable cameo by Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Howser, MD), cranked high on ecstasy and licking the leather interior of Harold’s VW. The evening begins in a haze of bong smoke during the subsequent munchies attack, they decide to seek out a White Castle burger stand. Both 20-something Manhattan-ites, Harold is an overworked investment banker lacking in social confidence, while his housemate Kumar is a closet genius but prefers to spend his time hoarding premium marijuana. These are just “two guys” in other words and the film takes place over the course of an evening for the two of them. The two leads, the titular Harold (Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are Korean American and Indian American, respectively, but from the beginning of the movie, these details are immaterial. You might not expect such heady questions to emerge from a movie directed by Danny Leiner, the man who made Dude, Where’s My Car? But, like the Wayans brothers’ White Chicks and Jessy Terrero’s Soul Plane, Harold and Kumar is part of a recent shift in teen comedies, blurring the line between suburban and urban humor, a mix also reflected in the film’s muddled approach to race.

The query was an unexpected moment of uncertainty, acknowledging that Harold and Kumar is more than just another summer comedy, but also a marker of “racial progress” (or lack thereof) in Hollywood. Namely, his role, as Harold, in one of the first major studio projects to feature two Asian American male leads. “Did we fail?” John Cho’s question, asked after an advance screening of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, has a specific context.

And kumar go to white castle