Even without the moniker "National Lampoon's" attached,
"Van Wilder" would bear comparisons with that classic college
debauchery film of yore: "National
Lampoon's Animal House". Such compatisons, however, only
serve to illustrate why the latter film deserves to be mentioned in
the same breath as such fine films as "Lawrence
of Arabia" and "2001:
A Space Odyssey". As those films were the pinnacle of excellence
in their particular field, such was "Animal House". "Animal
House" is, pound for pound, one of the finest comedies ever
made and, by a long margin, the greatest film ever made about the
subject of slacking off and drinking heavily while getting laid a
lot in college. Oh, go ahead and try to think of another film that
deserves such a title. Uh-huh. I didn't think so. "Animal
House" is the best of its kind. So it's not surprising that
"Van Wilder" doesn't measure up. How could it? It doesn't
have John Belushi (overrated, true, but damn hilarious nonetheless)
or Tim Matheson (underrated and damn hilarious as well) and it doesn't
have nearly as many unclothed breasts in it.
Not that "Animal House" had that much flesh in it. It just seemed like it
had more than it really did. "Van Wilder" may, actually,
have a couple more tits in it. But it feels a lot more chaste. It's
lacking something that the earlier film had. Well, actually, it's
lacking a lot that the earlier film had. It's lacking a sense of the
outrageous, for one thing. It's lacking a complete sense of moral
irresponsibility, for another. And it's lacking the laughs, for one
last thing. The makers of "Van Wilder" do seem to be trying.
It's just that they seem to be trying too hard.
But, before I get too carried away, let me outline the plot of "Van
Wilder". You see, the film is about a young man named Van Wilder
(Ryan Reynolds) who has been in college for seven years and has not
yet graduated. He no longer goes to class. He no longer tries. He
simply parties, gets laid, and raises money for campus charities.
He's a god to the students of his particular college (I think they
may have even identified it as Northwestern) and he is pretty much
exactly like Ferris Bueller. He knows every trick, he has everyone
eating out of the palm of his hand, etc. One day his father (Tim Matheson,
okay, I guess this movie does have Tim Matheson in it) decides that
he's tired of his son wasting all his money on tuition. He cuts Van
off, which forces Van to come up with ingenious (or so the film would
have us believe) ways of raising his tuition. He also becomes the
subject of research for a journalism major (Tara Reid) who wants to
know what makes him tick for an article she is doing.
The jokes in "Van Wilder" are pretty lame and, sometimes,
downright disgusting. Watching a bunch of men, no matter how venal
and prickish they are, gobble dog semen is not funny in the least.
It's one of the few movies that almost made me vomit (the others were
"The
Exorcist" and "Problem Child 2"). Seriously, I
was gagging and nearly losing it during this scene. But at least it
got a reaction out of me. Most of the film didn't even do that much.
The grossout humor is so tired in this film that it should have crutches.
It's been done to death by this point. Grossout humor, in most movies,
is far from fresh. The past five years have seen so many "There's
Something About Mary" and "American
Pie" clones that they can't help but cause the eyes to glaze
over. No, it is not particularly funny that a dog has huge genatalia.
No, it's not that amusing to watch a man who may or may not be getting
fellated by an old Japanese woman. And a man who has drank a great
deal of Ex-Lax shitting in a wastebasket at a job interview....well,
okay, I'll give them that one. But that gag is on its last legs, you
will have to admit.
The most depressing thing about "Van Wilder" is the things
that it should be doing right. Is it too much to ask that we are invited
to a few keggers that really raise the roof? Something along the lines
of the toga party in "Animal
House" or the prolonged bachelor party in, well, "Bachelor
Party". In the late Seventies and most of the Eighties, filmmakers
knew how to fill one of these things with big breasts, lots of beer,
fun uses of profanity, and a couple off-color jokes. The parties in
"Animal House" were Wangierian orgies of debauchery and drunken excess
that you would almost be afraid to attend. I've seen middle school
field trips that looked more obscene than the so-called parties in
"Van Wilder". I mean, Jesus Christ!, they actually card
people going into a kegger! When the shit was the last time you went
to a kegger that lame?
Every generation gets the college party movie it deserves, I suppose.
The Seventies had "Animal
House", full of illegal activity and lewd acts of perversion.
The new millenium gets "Van Wilder", in which the bad guys
are still impotent and too smart, a professor still goes red in the
face and yells the good guy's name in a deragatory fashion, but the
keggers are carded at the door and the good guy raises money for charity.
The most telling thing about this film is that when it turns sorta
serious and the partyhound actually starts to question his place in
the Cosmos and legitimately falls in love with a woman, the film actually
improves. The film knows how to do this stuff, and do it sorta well.
There isn't one unpredictable moment in the whole film (we know that
Tara will learn to loosen up and Van will learn to be a little more
serious, we know that everything will turn out alright in the end),
but it does sometimes provide some charm. Ryan Reynolds is a likable
guy with the charisma of a young Chevy Chase or Jim Carrey back when
all he wanted was to be funny. If he had better material to work with,
he might actually have something. And Tara Reid is sweet in it. And
that's nice and everything. I actually sorta cared whether Van made
up with Tara Reid or whether his father accepted him again or whether
the poor schlub actually graduated. And that's nice and all, but it's
not the reason I rent a movie like this. I rent a movie like this
to see the sorts of things that I used to take for granted in films
like "Used Cars" and "Bachelor Party". If the
good guy started to shape up his act in one of those movies, I think
I would have walked out. In this film, I actually started to enjoy
it when it started to take itself seriously.
And, strange as it may sound, that is just plain wrong. But, at least,
it does have some redeeming value. It's a kegger comedy you could
almost take home to Mom. And that's just wrong.
