DENVER, Aug. 17, 2011 - Santa won't know what hit him this holiday season.
The third film in the marijuana-stained "Harold & Kumar" series takes on ol' Kris Kringle, mistletoe and other sacred holiday institutions.
"A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas," arriving in theaters Nov. 4., promises more raunchy gags and the return of franchise regular Neil Patrick Harris playing ... Neil Patrick Harris.
The trailer suggestions the potential for sacrilege, but these stoners are far less mean-spirited than your average installment of "Real Time with Bill Maher."
The bigger question remains - can a stoner comedy become a holiday classic? Let's face it, the recent run of Christmas-themed movies has been downright awful.
Let's list the biggest offenders;
- "Four Christmases" - Strained holiday cheer from the usually reliable Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon.
- "Surviving Christmas" - Ben Affleck does Christmas. Badly.
- "Deck the Halls" - Unwatchable dreck wasting the talents of Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito.
- "Fred Claus" - Repeate offender Vaughn can't save this misbegotten holiday romp.
- "Christmas with the Kranks" - The best of this lot, and that's hardly an endorsement.
You have to go back to 2003's "Elf" to recall a Christmas film which quickly became a seasonal staple.
Can "Harold & Kumar" reverse that trend? You'd have to be high to bet on it.
Christian Toto is a veteran journalist and film critic whose work appears in The Denver Post, Box Office Magazine and PajamasMedia.com. His movie reviews are heard on WTOP radio and "The Dennis Miller Show," and he blogs on film at What Would Toto Watch? Read more of Christian's work at Movies in Toto in the Communities at the Washington Times. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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