Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Tara Reid, Kal Penn, Tim Matheson, Daniel Cosgrove

Director: Walter Becker

Summary: Van Wilder is a college senior, who after losing his allowance from his father, starts his own business as party organiser with a difference...

Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds) is a college stud who is in no rush to finish his coursework and graduate. In fact, after six years of partying his way through Coolidge College, his parents have decided to stop paying his tuition, but Van Wilder isn't worried--he just needs to find a way to pay it himself and keep the fun coming. His fundraising ideas include a topless tutorial service and other raunchy schemes, which only help add to Van's "Big Man on Campus" status.
A romance develops between Van and Gwen (Tara Reid), who is writing an investigative piece on Van for the school newspaper. Through his exploits, Van eventually begins to turn over a new leaf, and finally grow up. But not before there are plenty of opportunities for the kind of gross-out humor that teen flicks like THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and AMERICAN PIE have made so popular in recent years. The main set piece here involves dog semen injected into eclairs. While this is not exactly highbrow fare, teen audiences who are not too squeamish will enjoy this bawdy college romp.

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Van Wilder(Ryan Reynolds) has managed to spend a decade loafing at college by deliberately failing his finals each year. When his dad wakes up and pulls his funding, Van turns to his party-organising skills and big-man-on-campus image to pay his way. Complications arise when an aspiring college-rag journo (Tara Reid--the girlfriend of the wimpy one in American Pie) shows an interest, and Van begins to question his bachelor-boy lifestyle.

Though Van Wilder: Party Liaisoncontains the occasional clever line ("at least Ms Pacman swallows") and a nice self-referential appearance from Tim Matheson--the original college lothario from the archetypal (and still the best) frat-kids movie, Animal House--it's still fundamentally flawed. It's difficult, for one thing, to believe in the appalling central character's great popularity with his peers--the Fonze he ain't. It's also evident that Reynolds has watched one too many Jim Carrey performances, while Reid's role reduces her to being little more than insubstantial eye-candy. The film's makers have been so anxious to get in all the required references (pot-smoking, bodily functions and nudity) that they've forgotten to make it any good. Worse, along the way it takes cheap gratuitous pot shots at the disabled, the ugly, the old and the obese.

Though it purports to be a "party-on" parable, then, its predictably corny denouement and the conventional values it ultimately espouses reek of Republican morality. There are probably worse ways to spend an hour-and-a-half, but it would be hard to call them to mind when watching this execrable, formulaic drivel--do yourself a favour and enjoy American Pieagain instead. --Paul Eisinger

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Trailers, Interviews, Deleted Scenes, Interactive Game
Year:	2002
Release Date:	June 30, 2003
Runtime:	89 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	M P 203 D
Keywords:	National, Party, Comedy, General, Van, Wilder, Lampoon's, Liaison, Liason
Genre:	Comedy