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Asian Americans reflect on how ‘Harold & Kumar’ helped weed out stereotypes

“‘Harold and Kumar’ is a movie that shows that Asian Americans get to be hot-messes, too,” one sociology professor said.

Harold is being bullied into doing the work of his white co-workers, who claim that “Asian guys love crunching numbers,” and Kumar attempts to buck his doctor father’s demanding expectations by intentionally throwing a medical school interview. The friends set off on a quest to fulfill their cravings — which include a trip to Princeton to find more weed, a hitchhiking Neil Patrick Harris, and an encounter with a cheetah on the loose — and, in turn, end up on a journey of self-discovery. Anthony Ocampo, a sociology professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, said that in the early aughts, major studio films barely featured any Asian Americans in speaking roles.

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