Harold and Kumar go to White Castle / Get the Munchies / chassent le burger

I watched Star Trek into Darkness for the second time a few weeks ago, and seeing John Cho (who is all sorts of awesome) made me want to watch Harold and Kumar get the Munchies again.

I hadn't seen it in God knows how many years, and I completely forgot that the burger place they tried to go to is called White Castle. This made me think "Isn't there a film called Harold and Kumar go to White Castle?". A quick check on IMDB revealed that I was actually watching "White Castle", but that the film had been retitled "the Munchies" for the UK market.

It makes sense. Sorta. As far as I can tell, no one in the UK knows what "White Castle" is, and, although you get it 15 minutes into the film or so, I guess they might have thought that Brits would expect some knight in shining armour kind of films. Who knows.

The original title, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle doesn't give much away: you know the boys go some place, for food, and if you know the film is a comedy, you might assume it's not going to be a smooth ride. Although the poster's tagline mentions "High Times", which could be a hint indeed.

The British title definitely set things out to be a stoner comedy from the off. I had to double check as I only had heard "the munchies" used in a stoner context, so I thought I was reading too much into this, but a quick poll around me ("Why are you asking this, by the way?") revealed that is that if one hears someone else say they have the munchies, one most of the time automatically think "weed". So this does give a little bit more away than the original title. They also kept the original tagline "Fast food, high times" on the poster, but added "One hilarious trip", possibly aware that their version was lacking the epic adventure potential of the "go to". And I mean epic as in the epic poetry genre, like the Odyssey.

The French title " Harold et Kumar chassent le burger" - Harold and Kumar hunt the burger- is, after all, not as bad a title as I had first thought as it does capture the "White Castle" side of the original without actually saying it, and the potentially wacky adventure: after all, who hunts burgers?

It is, surprisingly, and in my opinion, of course,  the best translation of the two .