Capsule reviews of films opening this week:
"Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay" - The poster is the best thing about this sequel, depicting the brainy potheads in orange prison jumpsuits staring in disbelief from behind a wire-mesh fence. That one still image captures all the inherent humor of two wily-as-Bugs-Bunny guys who are about to bust out of the U.S. military's main boarding house for terrorism suspects. Actually seeing them in motion is mostly an anticlimactic affair as the sequel follows the fitfully funny, fitfully too-stupid-to-live pattern of 2004's "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle." That first movie fizzled in its theatrical release but found an audience on DVD, leading to Chapter 2 in the adventures of best buds Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn). The sequel has them consigned to Gitmo after an airline marijuana mishap is confused with a terrorist attack. Their escape features encounters with partying Klansmen, President Bush and, of course, Neil Patrick Harris as the "How I Met Your Mother" star reprises his bit as a randy, doped-up version of himself. But filmmakers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg mostly repeat themselves, and you end up wishing for something more consistently smart and amusing for the bright, lovable Harold and Kumar. R for strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive language and drug use. 102 min. Two stars out of four.
_ David Germain, AP Movie Writer
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"Standard Operating Procedure" - Errol Morris doesn't condemn the soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison, the ones who shot and posed for those photographs that shocked the world nearly five years ago, though it would have been easy for him to do so. But the veteran documentarian doesn't exactly let them off the hook, either. He simply allows them to look into the camera and tell us what happened, why they did what they did _ matter-of-factly, and with disarming candor. That's probably the greatest strength of Morris' film, which isn't quite as powerful as his 2003 Academy Award winner "The Fog of War," but still has its startling moments nonetheless. Yes, Morris covers much of the same ground Rory Kennedy did last year with her HBO film "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib." He interviews many of the same guards at the infamous prison and similarly doesn't spare us from the graphic pictures _ images of humiliation and abuse we've seen countless times before, yet they still turn the stomach. What this self-described detective filmmaker does is reach the conclusion, after two years of investigation, that these soldiers were following orders in a situation where everything resembling civility and humanity seemed out of order. And he forces us to ask ourselves what we would have done in their position, whether or not we like the answer. R for disturbing images and content involving torture and graphic nudity, and for language. 117 min. Three stars out of four.
_ Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
