Save the title character, every speaking part in this picture is a stereotype or tiresome cliché. The story frequently goes off in refreshingly bizarre directions, and Reynolds' irreverence is downright irresistible.īut for every shining moment of cagey, capricious comedy, there's an equal and opposite moment of acute unoriginality or beyond-belief bad taste. I must have written down 15 lines of sharply scintillating dialogue even funnier than those above in my screening notes. When "Van Wilder" sticks to its wits, its comedy is unstoppable. "Are you stalking me?" he grins Puckishly after bumping into her unexpectedly. But she does make an ideal object of desire for Van, who treats her journalistic pursuit of him as if she's on the make.
Reid ( "American Pie," "Josie and the Pussycats") has zero credibility as a brain - especially since she's also one of those movie girls too stupid to realize her arrogant, negligent, frat-brother boyfriend is Mr.
These kinds of antics draw the attention of a sexy but self-serious school newspaper reporter ( Tara Reid) assigned to write a story about Van over her protests that she'd rather be tackling politics or other weight issues. Reynolds embraces his character's smart-aleck shallowness with such imaginative gusto it renders the guy paradoxically congenial from his very first scene, in which he flabbergasts a suicidal freshman by joining the kid on the roof of his dorm, completely naked from the waist down. That's 'I moan' backwards," Van winks to a nervous nerd while introducing him to a beautiful babe that wouldn't have been caught dead at his party without our hero's help. Reynolds emits an aura of smarmy charm in the title role of consummate collegiate slacker Van Wilder who, after seven years as Big Man On Campus and $40,000 in tuition, has been cut off by his fed-up father (played by Tim Matheson in one of the flick's many nods to "Animal House").ĭesperately seeking funds to continue his mock education, Van tests the waters of small business, starting a pay-to-study "topless tutors" program and offering his services as a "party liaison," souping up even the nerdiest frat parties until they're the hottest tickets on campus. I ask only because "National Lampoon's Van Wilder" has such hilariously droll dialogue and such a witty, charismatic lead in Ryan Reynolds (of TV's "Two Guys and a Girl") that it's just bursting with untapped crafty comic energy that has been redirected toward the lowest of the lowbrow. Have campus comedies really reached the point where fashionable, ante-upping gross-out gags are obligatory? I mean, do we really need a movie in which bulldog semen is served in pastries to unsuspecting frat jerks?