I sort of have a soft spot for absurd shock comedy.  Among my favorites are any Broken Lizard manifestation: Super Troopers, Club Dread, or BeerFest.  Then there are others involving equally cheap physical elements from Anchorman and Old School, Eurotrip and The Naked Gun, to The 40 Year Old Virgin or Wedding Crashers.  Even still, there are the linguistically neurotic View Askew-niverse flicks from Kevin Smith: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, or Dogma.

All have their good points and bad, and add their unique point of view to this crazy world - a drug-fogged and drunk, sexually charged but somehow fiercely grounded point of view - yet produce the same funny, light-hearted effect.  It is this that brought me to watch Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

White Castle was a wonderful treat at the end of a long day of dramatic, tense, and strained real-world-itis.  There’s something magical in the flash of a really hot chick’s boobs in a strange and awkward situation that puts the world into a greater perspective than anything Nietzsche has written.

The puff of a bong or the utterance of a uniquely prescribed expletive at just the right time can push all the nastiness out of the mind in such a way that even the most practiced Buddhists would marvel in wonderment.

Bearing all of this in mind, I had very high expectations for White Castle’s sequel: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.  There was enough anxiety there that I averted its presence in the theater.  How wrong I was for doing so.

Escape picks up where White Castle leaves off in that this generation’s Crosby and Hope are on their way to Amsterdam to follow Harold’s (John Cho) love interest in a heroic gesture to defy his sweet and timid nature.

In addition, there is an added love interest for Kumar (Kal Penn).  This is the girl that got away, the girl who taught him to resist the establishment and be true to himself.  The girl who taught him to love weed.  This is terribly important as it is the primary mechanism that drives the intricate and intelligently dumb story.

Weed is Kumar’s spinach, so to speak, as it empowers him to stand up for himself and for what he knows is right.  It is important because it is natural, it is safe, and it is docile.  Namely, it engenders the perfect balance of nature and civilization.  It is the perfect symbol of that formless yet present, harmless yet powerful, non-intrusive yet perfectly pervasive universal feeling and ideal: love.

I won’t go into the meat of the movie because I strongly encourage everyone I know, who isn’t easily offended, to see it for themselves.  Don’t take it too seriously but don’t write it off too quickly either.  It’s just a movie, but it takes a hold of that idea and runs with it.  Pick it up if you want to have a good time and laugh heartily.  It doesn’t require much attention but gives back equally to whatever level of attention you pay.  It is well worth your money.

What this movie does to me, however, is embiggen my sense of self-righteousness in how I feel about our strange political culture.  Escape’s most important moral is that we should remember that LIBERTY is the foundation upon which our government rests.  And it loses its legitimacy when it shifts from that foundation.

But, enough of all that.  I’m not going to rant and rave about what I think about the government or the people who want to usurp it for their personal beliefs.  Instead, I’m going to talk a little about which of my favorite fun flicks best represent my Libertarian Ideals.

I’ll start from this perspective, and perhaps, in the future, I’ll let you in on which Conservative and which Liberal movies I have a secret crush on.

Roll Credits!

1. Ghostbusters

Ivan Reitman strikes gold in the most Libertarian movie of all time.  Why? Its support of laissez-faire economics (”You’ve never worked in the private sector…they demand results”), the use of sometimes bogus government authority (the EPA in this example) to strangle the rights of the individual, and the willing adherence to secularism in business and politics to assure the proper space for individual expression. ”When there’s something strange in your neighborhood…” like oppression, intolerence, and involuntary servitude, “who you gonna call?”  Ghostbusters!

1.5 Evolution

Evolution is like Ghostbusters Jr.  Ivan Reitman recycles the old formula to stick it to the man again.  Yet instead of the EPA, he uses the Military as the agents of injustice.  And again, he uses an unbelievable ecological disaster to expose the ever-present underlying threat of governmental abuse.  Still a blast, it’s on my list especially for the greatest product placement ever: Head & Shoulders saves the day!

2. Demolition Man

Who would have thought that a second-rate action flick would most presciently describe America’s descent from its foundational ideas?  That’s exactly what Sly and company accomplish in this awesomely bad, over-the-top action-comedy.  Dystopian futures are a staple of Libertarian fiction (see Robert Heinlein for proof).  However, like most futuristic films, the makers are way off in left field.  Despite some obvious in-your-face Hollywood induced prop-sicles (”He doesn’t know how to use the three sea shells?!) Demolition Man is surprisingly spot-on.  It takes the fascist implications from the leftist and rightist values and blends them perfectly into the kind of compromise that is bone-chillingly realistic.  Liberals go after tobacco and anything bad for you and want to socialize everything.  Conservatives want to ban anything socially offensive like bad language or promiscuous sex and go light on civil liberties.  Demolition Man tells the moral authoritarians to “shovel it” and “blows” those guys (”Away, blows these guys away”) while showing us the importance of smearing green jell-o on our naked bodies while running freely down the street.  Why would we do this?  “Because (we) might suddenly feel the need!”

I say you chew on these for a while.  Take them in, watch ‘em again, and consider the real implications they suppose in terms of freedom and justice.  If you’re lucky, you just might get the remainder of the list within a short period of time.