A very harold kumar 3d christmas

How it works

How it works is a rated-R Christmas farce about two friends who have drifted apart and then spend a night trying to replace a destroyed tree. John Cho plays Harold Lee. Kal Penn plays Kumar Patel. Todd Strauss-Schulson directed. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg wrote it, as they did the earlier films. Warner Bros. Pictures released it. Neil Patrick Harris appears as a fictional version of himself, continuing a joke from the series.

The first film was Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004). The second was Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008). This third one puts Christmas in the title and 3-D in the gimmick: objects, food, and smoke are staged to come at the audience. People also search it as A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, dropping the 3D. That search is the same picture, not a fourth film and not a television special.

The plot, in outline, is seasonal without being a nativity play. Harold is married and trying to host a respectable Christmas. Kumar is not. A tree is ruined. The pair go out to find another before family arrives. What happens on that errand is crude, loud, and built for an adult audience. The MPAA rating covers strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use, and some violence. It is not a children’s Christmas film.

A December title on a November release

Studios open Christmas movies before December so the run includes Thanksgiving weekend and the early-decoration weeks. 4 November 2011 was a Friday. That is a normal wide-release weekday, not Christmas Eve. You can watch the film in July and it will still be a Christmas plot. The civil holiday remains 25 December. The running time is about an hour and a half. It will not fill the 25th unless you play it as one object among others.

Title on the poster: A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. Shorter search title: A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas. U.S. theatrical opening: 4 November 2011. Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson. Writers: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.

Leads: John Cho and Kal Penn, with Neil Patrick Harris. Watching it is a household choice, not a ritual. Some people put it in a rotation with other irreverent Christmas pictures. Some people want silent night and should pick a different reel. The 3-D version was a theatrical format. Home copies may be flat. If you wanted the gimmick, check which file or disc you actually have before you complain that nothing flew at the sofa.

What the film is not

It is not a guide to cooking, church, or civic closures. It will not tell you whether 25 December 2026 is a Friday (it is) or how many days remain until that Friday. It will not substitute for a tree if you do not have one. The joke of the plot is that the tree mattered to the in-laws. Your in-laws may not share that joke.

A Christmas film released in November is still a film. The 25th does not move earlier because Harold’s tree caught fire on a sound stage. If a search led you here from “a very harold kumar christmas” without the 3D, you are in the right place. If it led you here from a hymn, you are not. Put the remote down and look at the actual date on the wall when the errand is a real dinner, not a rated-R night in New Jersey.