It’s been four years, but they’re finally back.

Everyone’s favorite stoners, Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are hitting the big screen again with “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,” the sequel to the cult hit “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” In a recent conference call with the stars, Cho and Penn helped shed some light on the truth behind the haze.

Almost every college kid has seen “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” probably in various stages of intoxication or during a late night attack of insomnia. Many rank it up high as one of their favorite movies.

“I love ‘Harold and Kumar.’ I’ve seen it so many times and it never gets old,” said Tony Lopez, a junior computer science major.

However, the movie only earned $18 million in theaters domestically. Luckily for Cho, Penn and director Danny Leiner, “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” turned out to be a sleeper hit, grossing over $30 million in DVD sales.

The stars were only mildly surprised by the movie’s success.

“We were hoping it would be a box office success, and it really wasn’t,” said Cho. “So we were disappointed initially, but we hoped it would be a hit on DVD and it was slowly but surely. And it took a long time for it to get there, but better late than never.”

It was actually the delayed success of the first movie that allowed the sequel to be made. “If it was a box office hit, then [the script] wouldn’t be the script that they have now,” said Penn.

Despite the title’s obvious reference to the United States military prison, the new film isn’t too political. It deals more with the pop culture aspect of politics.

We’ll also be exposed to more of the race humor that we saw in the first film: “Kumar? What is that, five o’s or two u’s?”

“I really like the way in which Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg [the writers and directors] totally deconstruct a lot of those stereotypes just with the use of humor,” Penn said. “I think that’s great.”

In theaters nationwide on April 25, “Escape from Guantanamo Bay” has garnered some great reviews. The Daily Variety called it “’Animal House’ meets ‘Dr. Strangelove’ … one of the ballsiest comedies to come out of Hollywood in a long time” and Cinema Blend stated, “If you loved the first one, you’re going to piss yourself laughing at this.”

However, some are wary of the curse of the sequel.

“I’m not sure if the new movie is gonna be any good. The reason why the first one was so good was because people didn’t know what it was and then you watched it and were surprised,” Shane Caming, a sophomore political science major said. “There’s not gonna be any surprise with this one.”

Still, the stars are hopeful. “I’ve heard that folks are hoping for something that happened with … ’Transporter.’ The movie ‘Transporter’ did terribly in the box office when it first opened, but it got a huge following on DVD. And when ‘Transporter 2’ opened it was the No. 1 movie in America, if I’m not mistaken, for a weekend or two at least,” said Penn.

Surprisingly, the boys are not like their movie counterparts at all.

“I’m actually trying to move away from characters like this,” Penn said. “People don’t believe this but I was a vegetarian [during the filming]. I eat organic. I don’t smoke weed.”

Allegedly, the real life John Cho is more like Kumar and the actual Kal Penn is more like Harold.

Still, they were both excited to revisit Harold and Kumar. “[Filming the sequel was] a couple of months of spending time with your friends,” said Penn.

But don’t expect them to continue with their college, gross-out humor past. The two have recently moved on to more dramatic roles. John Cho will be playing Hikaru Sulu in the upcoming “Star Trek” movie and you can see Kal Penn as Dr. Lawrence Kutner in “House M.D.” on Fox.