A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Yeah, that's right: I went, and I'm even admitting it publicly. You know what else? It was funny, damn funny.

If you don't know the Harold and Kumar movies, of which this is the third, think Cheech and Chong for the new century, stoner films with fewer censors riding herd on them. Mix in a good helping of Neil Patrick Harris hamming it up, and you have a surefire recipe for dumb humor.

Well, okay, not just dumb humor: frequently offensive dumb humor. This film sets out to offend in every area it can, though mostly in gentle, elbow-lightly-in-the-rib sorts of ways, and it succeeds in doing just that. Whatever your religion, odds are the movie manages to take a gentle swipe at it. Its very fairness in picking on everything helps keep the humor fun and not mean.

It's tempting to label this sort of film a guy thing, but this one is not, or at least it wasn't on the night we went. About 40% of the audience was female, and the women were laughing as loudly as the men.

I should also note that this film never for a minute tries to be serious. It's a stoner fantasy fable from start to finish. That's a good thing, by the way; when this type of movie tries to be serious, it almost always fails badly.

I laughed a lot, and if the film has any appeal at all to you, I suspect you will, too. I even found the 3D effects, over-done and over-the-top as they were, to be worth the extra cost.

I can't wait for the unrated DVD.