It's a tasteless, tacky movie full of cheap T&A.
National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002)
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Reviews Counted:86
Fresh:16
Rotten:70
Average Rating:3.5/10
Consensus: A derivative gross-out comedy that's short on laughs.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for strong sexual content, gross humor, language and some drug content
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Apr 5, 2002 Wide
Box Office: $4,208,429
Synopsis: Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds, ABC’s “Two Guys and a Girl”) might be starting his seventh year at Coolidge College, but graduation is the furthest thing from his mind. Armed with a personal assistant... Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds, ABC’s “Two Guys and a Girl”) might be starting his seventh year at Coolidge College, but graduation is the furthest thing from his mind. Armed with a personal assistant and a coterie of admirers, Van has reached the status of living legend on campus, throwing bashes that make geeks popular, raise money for charity and generally “inspire the uninspired.” But when Van’s father refuses to pay any more of his son’s tuition bills, Van must turn to party planning for profit in order to continue living in under-graduate bliss, thereby becoming the subject of an exposé by disapproving school journalist Gwen Pearson (Tara Reid, Josie and the Pussycats, American Pie). What begins as a clash of wills, however, soon leads to unexpected romance as Van and Gwen both realize they have a lot to learn from each other. The only problem: Gwen’s self-obsessed, frat house boyfriend, Richard, who’s determined, at any cost, to put a stop to Van’s rule as campus king. In the tradition of Ferris Beuller’s Day Off and Rushmore, Van Wilder: Party Liaison brings us an intrepid, visionary hero with the brains and the bravado to change school as we know it. Outrageous, irreverent and absolutely charming, this winning campus comedy is all about the burden of facing real life…and the freedom that comes from not taking it too seriously. -- © 2002 Artisan Entertainment [More]
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Tara Reid, Kal Penn, Tim Matheson
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Tara Reid, Kal Penn, Tim Matheson, Daniel Cosgrove
Director: Walt Becker
Director: Walt Becker
Screenwriter: David Wagner, Brent Goldberg
Producer: Peter Abrams, Andrew Panay
Composer: David Lawrence
Studio: Artisan Entertainment
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Reviews for National Lampoon's Van Wilder
While I realize the film isn't aspiring to be anything more than a dumb and/or raucous comedy, there's good/smart dumb and lame/stupid dumb. This effort clearly falls into the latter category.
When it runs out of ways to be funny, Van Wilder resorts to schmaltz.
While some of the pranks in National Lampoon's Van Wilder are more extreme than we've seen in There's Something About Mary or the American Pie movies, this film has enough heart to balance it out.
Van Wilder doesn't bring anything new to the proverbial table, but it does possess a coherence absent in recent crass-a-thons like Tomcats, Freddy Got Fingered, and Slackers.
This is the sort of low-grade dreck that usually goes straight to video --with a lousy script, inept direction, pathetic acting, poorly dubbed dialogue and murky cinematography, complete with visible boom mikes.
Van Wilder brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'comedy gag.' At least one scene is so disgusting that viewers may be hard pressed to retain their lunch.
Smug and dumb as they come, it's a series of eruptive gross-out sketches tenuously linked by a romance plot.
Adolescents will be adequately served by the movie's sophomoric blend of shenanigans and slapstick, although the more lascivious-minded might be disappointed in the relative modesty of a movie that sports a 'topless tutorial service.'
This a movie wherein Tara Reid plays the 'smart girl' -- that alone has got to be worth the price of a ticket.
[Reynold's] boyish, sweet-natured comic appeal makes ''Van Wilder'' better than it has a right to be.
This movie, a certain scene in particular, brought me uncomfortably close to losing my lunch.
The movie ends with outtakes in which most of the characters forget their lines and just utter 'uhhh,' which is better than most of the writing in the movie.
Laughter for me was such a physical impossibility during National Lampoon's Van Wilder that had I not been pledged to sit through the film, I would have lifted myself up by my bootstraps and fled.
Once upon a time, anything associated with the name "National Lampoon" generated as many chuckles as a can of nitrous oxide. Now the effect is more like a laxative.
For a movie that is almost entirely set at keggers, it's surprisingly entertaining.
Had it not wandered into aforementioned eclair territory, it could have been better than a discount video rental.
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