National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002)

To me, this movie is perfection.

The Age of Commercialism

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's definitely hard to make a movie if it has anything to do with teenagers or even those in their 20s in the 21th century. That's like having to make a happy movie about concentration camps in the Second World War. America's (and the West's) moral decline has hit rock bottom and movies like Van Wilder shamelessly capitalize on that. Anyone can write a screenplay like the one behind Van Wilder. All you need to have is the imagination of a teenager who hasn't outgrown his puberty and hasn't ever learned responsibility or anything beyond his sexual frustrations that are so out of control that sex becomes his entire universe. Unfortunately, such imagination resembles actual reality today, as is statistically evident. MTV capitalizes on that all the time, such as with 16 and Pregnant (2009), Teen Mom (2009), etc. So a movie these days that has anything to do with teenagers can't possibly be a comedy, but nothing less than a hardcore drama to say the least, unless you consider the sky high divorce rates and incredibly declining birthrates and out of wedlock birthrates of today to be funny.Van Wilder is one of the most disgusting movies that has ever been made. College is portrayed as a post Woodstock festival (which by itself was already out of control) where all the females are shameless disgusting whores who will have sex with anyone, at any time, any place, any way and all the guys are equally sexually insane. Van Wilder almost borders with zoophilia, that's how far the sex obsession goes. There is in fact little indication that college is actually supposed to be about education and preparing for the real life. Nope, when sex is your universe/god/everything and having an orgasm is the most important thing in your life, then everything can (and is, in this movie) thrown in the trash can. That's what this movie is all about that: sex, sex and if you didn't get it the first "billion" times, it's about sex. Oh and in case I forget, it's about sex. How about the story? Sex. How about actually having a point? Sex. How about the comedy? Sex. How about entertainment? Sex. Was Ryan Reynolds good in this movie? Sex. Tara Reid? Sex. Kal Penn was in this movie as well. Oh, sex. To complete it all, think of jokes about bodily fluids, drug smoking and "tough guy" blacks and you have got yourself a movie that can only be produced by a mentally insane society.Gore is not scary, it's not going to automatically result into a good horror movie. Likewise, grossness is not funny, it's not going to automatically result into a good comedy movie. Just because people like to have sex doesn't mean that a movie that is obsessed about sex is going to automatically result into a good movie. Having to even to write a review to point these things out (yes, it has to be done when a movie like this gets a rating above 5) shows how far down the toilet society has gone. Can it even get any worse? It wouldn't matter.

I spotted this (apparently National Lampoon series continuing) teen movie because of the one or two good names in the cast, but also because it had such a low rating, one star out of five, I was intrigued to know why, from director Walt Becker (Wild Hogs). Basically Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds) is the most popular student in Coolidge College, and has been for the last seven years, as he puts on the highly successful parties and fund-raisers, but his father Vance Sr. (National Lampoon's Animal House's Tim Matheson) is concerned for his eduction. Van is a little thrown back by his father stopping his tuition fee, meaning he has to find his own ways to make money, but the party throwing continues, and he is met by sexy student Gwen Pearson (American Pie's Tara Reid) who is writing a paper on him and his antics. As she can't get very close to Van himself, she asks all the questions to people he knows in the college, including new Indian foreign exchange student assistant Taj Mahal Badalandabad (Harold & Kumar's Kal Penn), and this only makes him mad. Van does however find an attraction towards Gwen, and he is trying his flirting techniques to score with him, but she already has a boyfriend, snobby and rude president of the student union and the leader of a fraternity, Richard Bagg (Daniel Cosgrove). Val is put under much more pressure when his medical school finals are coming up, and he has to study hard to get a good average grade to graduate and leave college on a high. In the end, Gwen realises what her boyfriend Richard is doing to Van, and his infidelity, so she get her revenge filling his protein shake with a powerful laxative, Van does pass his final paper, and he and she celebrate graduation and embrace. Also starring Teck Holmes as Hutch, Deon Richmond as Mini Cochran and Alex Burns as Gordon. The cast, even though with some good names, don't really add anything, the scripting is one of the worst I have ever seen, and the comedy full of outrageously gross moments is disgusting and unfunny, especially ageist snogging of a student, large dog genitals, and dog semen filled pastries, only the laxative scene made me giggle for the fart noises, otherwise it is an absolutely awful comedy. Poor!

I had the displeasure of watching Van Wilder for the first and last time last night. Oh how it still burns in my head. This poor film suffers from some odd sort of cinematic schizophrenia: sometimes it thinks it wants to be animal house as it's stereotypical "frat-boy-cum-slave-driver" uses unidentified and nameless students as croquet posts and tunnels, and sometimes it wants to be a sentimental love story. This movie feels like a string of barely related pranks and humor that was patch-worked together with something akin to a plot. Our hero, the amiable and misguided but otherwise kind hearted Van Wilder is every college boys wet dream of a self-image: Intelligent but not too intelligent, clever with comebacks, interested in finer things like love and friends and disinterested in having a life revolving around work, living off his fathers bank account, campus celebrity, blah blah blah.... I'm sure you've probably seen this before and it was much better as a high school movie called "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", or was it "Animal House", or maybe this film just tries to lamely take concepts from these better films and update them for a newer audience. Whatever it is it's pure crap.I've never seen such sick humor outside of a Troma Studios movie. At least with a Troma release you expect lots of feces, vomit, sick humor involving children and a plot as absurd as the premise. But in Van Wilder you get all the vomit, sperm and abuse with a plot they think you might care about. Boy has it good, boy gets told by father that he will not receive more easy money, boy has roaring good time as he crunches many business opportunities to raise money so he can continue with his chosen looserly lifestyle, boy meets overtly-cute pseudo-intelligent girl who wants an interview for the school paper, and wait for the surprise... Boy falls in love with girl who has boyfriend in the snottiest frat on campus. Bet you didn't see that coming. Bet you don't see the friction, pranks and insults that go on between Frat boy and Van Wilder. But then again, I am sure you do.The shining moments of the movie are only so because they will stay burned in your brain for days afterwards. Take for instance the continual shots of Van's bulldog's obviously fake, over-sized testicles which will fill your screen on occasion. You will get endlessly entertained by swaying testicles, floating hot-tub testicles, Van kissing dog testicles in an early morning surprise. As if the large testicles weren't enough we get one of the most disturbing scenes in movie history when Van plots revenge against his rival, the boyfriend of the main love interest of course, by removing the cream filling of eclairs using gynecological instruments only to be refilled by having his friend masturbate the dog to create a new and exciting filling. But wait! There's more! Once the many eclairs are full and the dogs testicles are now down to a normal, smaller pair, they are placed casually and suspiciously outside the snotty frat-house. Oh the horror as for quite a while we are treated to many frat boys voraciously enjoying every gooey, warm, drippy, clear drop of the dog sperm from the eclair as they make obvious comments like "Wow, they're still warm" and "I think I have had these before". Trust me, much time is dedicated to this scene and.... Damn. I used to love eclairs.There is a lot of really easy and simple humor in this movie. Let's have an Indian student talk about dirty sex as it will be funny just for that accent. Or maybe we can get elementary school kids drunk and have them projectile vomit. Let's have strippers who fart smoke, that's cool.?? This movie has none of the charm of Beavis and Butthead, none of the stylistic unapologetic crassness of a Troma Film, And the plot is soooooo predictable and merely a rehash of almost every bad college film in history. It's the same plot as One Crazy Summer but not even close to funny and that film used Curtis Armstrong in a way that we all laughed at. In this film he has been degraded to a momentary laugh and no character at all. No body in this film gets fleshed out, the only thing remote to character development is the exchange student gets laid and Van Wilder comes to understand why he hasn't left college in 7 years and trust me that part is about as deep as a dog-bowl.I wish I had something nice to say about this movie. Even Showgirls is enjoyable for it's embarrassing attempt at seriousness, but this piece of work has no redeeming qualities. The only truly funny moment is as the credits roll and we see some of the behind the scenes pranks with several characters playing up homosexual elements that were only hinted at in the film. I'm sorry but I can't even recommend this film. Avoid it all costs.

I saw only ten minutes of this movie. It opens with Van Wilder, the main character, giving a speech at the commencement ceremonies. I thought it was for college, because everybody in cap and gown looks to be in their twenties. I was shocked when they made it clear that it was a high school graduation. As the popular class president continues speaking, the next speaker, a female valedictorian, crawls under the podium and proceeds to give Van Wilder oral sex as he delivers his speech. This was very demeaning to women and was extremely vulgar. Then, we see that Van Wilder's father is a tycoon, he gets whatever he wants, and the most gorgeous supermodel-type girls go crazy over him. This doesn't make sense, because the smirky Van Wilder doesn't seem to possess any special looks or charm that would make him desirable to women. At this point, I turned it off and, judging by the other comments; including the doggie/eclair scene, I'm very glad I did.