Bats_Breath Kermit the Frog once said "it's not easy being green", from the endless growing up Indian movies lately, it's not easy being brown either. There have so many of these "growing up brown in America" movies in the last decade, mostly low budget flicks that don't get a whole lot of press. The premise has nearly been run into the ground, traditional over bearing parents that are always in the wrong, rebellious kids who want to fit and date like everyone else and always in the right. One thing these movies have taught us for certain is this, if you're brown and growing up in America, you have a harder time assimilating into the mass culture then lighter skinned people. We've been told this over and over and it really does get tired. For young Indian Americans these films may perhaps be of deep cultural significance, loaded with in jokes that non-Indians may not get. For much of white America, they will strip the film down to it's basics and call it a "country mouse meeting city mouse" story and think "meh, what's the big deal?" Probably gutting the Indian Americans who think they struck comic gold showing off the cool Indians vs. the over exaggerated fresh off the boat (FOB) immigrant Indians. This story is going to simply come across as a country kid moving to the big city to mainstream America, only with East Indians in it, and they will likely miss the deep rooted angst and confusion that Indians want to convey. The movie shows the Indian Americans as self assured, cool and all around well adjusted while the immigrated FOB Indians are socially clueless. Nevermind that the character of Hari as presented in this film would probably be considered a moron even in India, the filmmakers know they have to make Hari that silly of an FOB Indian to justify his mistreatment by the Indian Americans. To make more of the desired impact that the Indian American culture so desperately seems to want to make with mainstream film goers, a more concrete and weighted story has to be delivered with far more sincere actors. It would be interesting to hear what real people in India think of this film, as about 1 billion people are being derided and made out as ridiculous caricatures. Of course a braver movie would show regular Indian Americans mistreating and not including normal behaved and decently dressed immigrant Indians in their social activities for the sole reason of their own xenophobia and insecurities...but that would be hitting too close to reality and I doubt any writer/director would be that brave.

kfields-6 While I agree that much of this film rehashes a lot of old stereotypes and clichés, I didn't feel that the film did so mean-spiritedly or even without good intentions. Wasn't the moral of the story that all the stereotypes and harsh feelings toward recent immigrants were wrong? While there were points where some of the jokes or plot lines were a little hokey or clichéd and completely overdone (for the love of god, no more doctor/engineer jokes!), I thought the film had some moments of very subtle, very astute analysis on identity, race relations and negotiations of who is "cool" and who isn't. Granted, I'm watching this film for my master's thesis, so I'm looking for all of those subtle cues, but if you look closely, you can see there is a lot more going on in this film than FOB jokes.That being said, the film isn't perfect. It gets really slow at points, and like I said, a lot of the jokes are completely run into the ground. However, I thought that Hari was such a sweet, likable character (he actually reminded me a lot of the main character in the movie "LOSER," which follows a pretty similar story line about a dorky mid-Westerner moving to New York for college), that he made the movie worth watching. Despite all this film's shortcomings, I'd rather watch it than American Desi (or a large number of the American Desi type films) any day. This is one of the few films of its type that didn't take a completely uncritical approach to "Indian" culture. This movie actually took some time to poke fun at itself.In my opinion, this film got much closer to satire than pretty much everything else I've seen in its genre, and if you are looking for a film to watch within this genre, this is probably the best option at this point.

jjthehacker where ever I go, I get a movie pass at the local video store and just start renting countless videos. Dude wheres the party was one of those movies that was released with no advertising and even the rental i got a hold of had no box, just a DVD with the name of the movie and I don't even think it had a photo or anything it was just a white label with the name. so I watched it, and it focuses on the FOB.. F.O.B Fresh off the boat aspect of the Indian crew.. basically you have a bunch of Indians who are totally assimilated into American culture like our hero Kal Penn (no accent) and they basically have a tight party (according to them I suppose) but the FOB's show up and they don't want to let them crash the party. and some girl gets mad at Kal for being insensitive and so he has to make it right. I was a little surprised that Kal's character didn't notice right away that the fobs were trying to get in on the action but he seems really out of it until the girl gets mad. Its a bit lame, most people can pick up on a group of people looking for action. I'm sure there is more to the movie than that but it boiled down to this. if you're going to have a huge party for your Indian friends, you better make sure that you give individual invitations out because that kind of event will be crashed every time by FOBS. Personally I don't have a problem with FOBS of any type, they're more fun than some of these dead beat Americans I know, and if they're crashing a raging party they're probably open minded at the very least. Let em in FOOL, they're here to party! LONG LIVE HAROLD & KUMAR! DJ LIQUIDSMOKE

kruayai I thought that this movie was fairly funny. However, if you are not open minded and do not find Indian accents funny, then do not watch this movie. This movie is about a guy (Hari) that is straight from India (thick accent, nerdy clothes, tennis shoes, and uses baby powder for deodorant) who is trying to fit in with other Americanized Indians and others. The stereotyping in this movie is hilarious, it's just good olé racial funnies that I can relate to since I'm of a different origin myself. This movie is nothing like Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, however it does have some stoner composed scenes, as a matter of fact there's only one scene where weed is even in the movie. Also, this movie is very low budget so it is not the best of movies, but in my opinion it is the humor that makes this movie. If you do watch this movie, Hari's friend is the funniest one in this movie, so if you do not think that he is funny, you might want to turn off this movie. He's the one with the longest name in Indian history.