Thanks for the memories!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds) is the eternal student at Coolidge College where he has been studying for seven years but yet to graduate. The reason is because he enjoys the raucous party lifestyle where he is respected and held in esteem by other students.Things take a turn when Wilder's dad stops his allowance and the student newspaper journalist wants to expose his party lifestyle. When some under-age kids are found by the police drinking in one of his parties Van Wilder's college days seem to be numbered and he decides he finally needs to grow up, realise his potential and graduate while taking revenge on the local college jock who got him into trouble.The film is a cross between Animal House and American Pie. Tim Matheson who plays Van Wilder's father appeared in Animal House and Tara Reid who plays the student paper journalist appeared in American Pie.There is also plenty of gross out humour such as éclairs filled with dog semen or a protein shake laced with laxatives. There is the added sub-plot of Wilder's assistant, an Indian exchanges student, Taj Mahal wanting to have sex with an American girl and getting into all sorts of scrapes like setting himself on fireReynolds injects enough heart and decency in Van Wilder to actually make you root for him and it is amusing enough with bad taste pranks to make you laugh several times.

This movie sure has gotten (more than) its share of bad user reviews! So many 1 star reviews, i can hardly believe it. And still it comes out with a 6+ star score. That is in itself very, very interesting.There is much grossness in this movie, that is true. Or to be more precise: there are some scenes that are extremely gross - but not many. There is no doubt in my mind that a lot of viewers will be offended by those scenes, and as a result have their whole experience ruined.The story in the movie is very simple: Van Wilder is still in College, for the 7th year in a row. It's basically just a theme that is elaborated upon.Here is my take on the movie: the elaboration on that theme is hilariously, expertly, joyfully, sympathetically well done. There is subtlety in this movie, if you care to look for it. I loved the characters, especially Van and Taj Mahal. I loved the way the story progressed, and how the dialog was written. But most of all i loved how all the actors gave everything to the movie. There is no holding back, no "this movie is so stupid that I'm not gonna do my best" kind of attitude. It shows that all the actors (yes, ALL the actors) loved every second of it.Too bad that some of the viewers didn't feel the same way, and that is, of course, their loss.

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.