Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is a 2004 American buddy stoner comedy film directed by Danny Leiner, written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, and starring John Cho, Kal Penn, and Neil Patrick Harris. The first installment in the Harold & Kumar franchise, the film follows Harold Lee (Cho) and Kumar Patel (Penn) on their adventure to a White Castle restaurant after smoking marijuana.

The buddy film is a subgenre of romantic comedy, a combination of the romance, adventure and comedy film in which two people, bonded through some kind of affection or love for each other, go on an adventure, mission, or road trip. The two typically are males with contrasting personalities. The contrast is sometimes accentuated by an ethnic difference between the two. The buddy film is commonplace in Western cinema; unlike some other film genres, it endured through the 20th century with different pairings and different themes.