courtesy of New Line Cinema Neil Patrick Harris (left) with Kal Penn (center) as Kumar and John Cho as Harold in “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.”

When the first joke that opens "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" has someone taking a noisy dump, followed closely by a rather graphic joke about masturbation, it's clear that it's going to be unapologetically raunchy.

This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Some films use raunchy humor to hilarious effect. Just look at "Knocked Up" or "The 40-Year Old Virgin." Unfortunately, the only reason this second installment of the adventures of the pothead duo adds all this extra vulgarity seems to be for the sole purpose of making everything bigger and more exaggerated than the original, which the filmmakers falsely assume will make it better.

The movie begins immediately after the end of the first film, "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," with Harold and Kumar in their apartments getting ready to go to Amsterdam. Once they board the airplane, Kumar tries to smoke some weed in the bathroom but is mistaken for a terrorist, so he and Harold, being ethnic minorities, are transported to Guantanamo Bay, from which they quickly manage to escape, true to the film's title.

From there the two must journey to Texas to meet Kumar's love interest, Vanessa (of course Harold can't be the only one with a love interest this time around). She is engaged to a self-absorbed jerk named Colton who works for the government and whom the duo hopes can help them rightfully regain their American identities.

Part of the charm of the first film was how simple the adventure essentially was: Harold and Kumar had to drive 45 miles to get some White Castle burgers, and it took them all of one night. It was short, sweet, to the point, and surprisingly effective at overturning movie stereotypes of Asians.

This one goes the opposite direction, opting for being over-the-top and crude at almost every single turn. More often than not, it's funny, but even when Harold and Kumar are falling through the sky at several hundred feet per second, fans of the first will miss the simpler times, like when Kumar had a dream about marrying a bag of marijuana.

Aside from the crudeness, this one sets its satirical sights on the United States government, but it never extends beyond the broadest kind of parody.

Every government official with whom Harold and Kumar come into contact (save one) is a bumbling buffoon. At one point, one of them shakes his head in awe at the stoner duo and says, "North Korea and al-Qaida workin' together." It's funny, but not very sophisticated.

Even a sexually appalling incident that occurs at Guantanamo Bay is played for laughs. Comedy should be daring if it's going to be raunchy (remember "Borat"?), but watching a prison guard force two men to perform oral sex on him and knowing that the filmmakers expect you to laugh at it is a little off-putting, especially when there seems to be no real point to the scene.

There's pushing the envelope, and then there's breaking it, and some of the supposed "satire" in this film definitely breaks it. The aforementioned scene is supposedly included to make some comment about how morally corrupt our government has become, but there's no clear sign of that, and its obvious execution dilutes this intention to the point of meaninglessness.

Neil Patrick Harris makes another appearance, but despite being plastered all over the trailers and posters, he's little more than a cameo in this one, being even less vital to the story than he was in the first.

It's disappointing, because many fans were doubtless hoping to see more Doogie Howser this time around, but at the same time it's also kind of a relief, because the filmmakers were conservative with Harris and didn't go too far with him, as with everything else.

Perhaps the worst thing about this movie is its predictability. Though the scope (in terms of distance) has widened, the same basic things happen to the two. They even meet a crazy old man in the woods who has a devastatingly attractive wife, like in the original.

Kumar's love interest bogs the whole story down with unnecessary tedium. Viewers will never particularly care about whether the two get together, and Danneel Harris, the actress, never elevates her character beyond the most basic stereotype.

"This'll be like 'Eurotrip,' except it won't suck," Kumar tells Harold at the beginning of the film. Thankfully, he's right. Despite all the flaws, there's something gloriously insane about Harold and Kumar. Sure, they go overboard in almost every way, but the duo still have effortless chemistry and can easily carry the heavy weight of this film on their own shoulders.

And fans who stick around after the credits will probably ask, "Dude, where's my sequel?"

Plot: C+
Acting: B+
Comedy: B+
Overall: B