“Van Wilder” falls short of classic Lampoon’s
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press

The most remarkable thing about “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder” is that it’s not nearly as atrocious as the ads would suggest.

It doesn’t come close to the hilarity of the best movies to carry the National Lampoon banner — 1978’s “Animal House,” which it aims to emulate, and the original “Vacation” from 1983.

It has all the obligatory gross-out jokes you’d expect. But for every stupid gag involving half-naked women or uncontrollable bodily functions, there’s a clever, laugh-out-loud line that sneaks up on you.

And Ryan Reynolds, as eternal college student Van Wilder, is the main reason for the movie’s sporadic success.

His shtick isn’t exactly original; with his cool, cocky delivery, he’s borrowing heavily from Val Kilmer in “Real Genius,” Chevy Chase in “Fletch” and Tim Matheson in “Animal House.” (As if that last connection weren’t clear enough, Matheson shows up briefly as Van’s stern father.)

But Reynolds, who starred in the defunct ABC sitcom “Two Guys and a Girl,” is charming enough to make the weaker material in Brent Goldberg and David T. Wagner’s script bearable — and the stronger material effortlessly funny.

Van has been a student at the fictional Coolidge College for nearly seven years, and he has no plans to graduate. He tools around campus in a customized golf cart and lives in an enormous, stylish dorm room.

Underclassmen line up around the building to compete for the chance to work as his assistant. (The interviews he puts them through provide one of the movie’s funnier sequences.)

He’s such an icon that the star reporter at the school paper, Gwen Pearson (Tara Reid), is assigned a feature story on him. She’d rather write articles on important topics like euthanasia, even though students don’t read them. “I don’t care,” she tells her editor defiantly. “I won’t pander to them.” (It’s hard not to laugh at the typically vapid Reid’s flat delivery of that line.)

But when Gwen reluctantly goes after the story, she learns that Van’s wealthy father has refused to pay his tuition this semester, forcing him to work as a party planner to keep himself in school.

(The parties, which Van plans for everyone from the dorky fraternity to the international club, resemble bashes from nearly every ’80s movie, from “Revenge of the Nerds” to “Sixteen Candles.”)

Naturally, because Van is so irresistible, Gwen falls for him, much to the dismay of her uptight, pre-med boyfriend, Richard (Daniel Cosgrove). This prompts Richard and his Delta Iota Kappa fraternity brothers to plot their revenge.

But Van, his best friend (Teck Holmes) and his assistant (Kal Penn), a virginal foreign exchange student from India, are always a step ahead.
We know from the start that Van ultimately will face his fears of the real world, and that he and Gwen will end up together, despite plot contrivances to keep them apart. Walt Becker, who directed last year’s “Buying the Cow,” which sat on the shelf, is at his weakest when he slows down and tries to wring poignancy from these scenes.

But even when the movie reaches its dopey, formulaic ending, it’s generated enough goodwill that it’s tolerable.

“National Lampoon’s Van Wilder,” an Artisan Entertainment release, is rated R for strong sexual content, gross humor, language and some drug content. Running time: 95 minutes.

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