It's spring'time to air out the apartment, time to ignore the mounting papers and midterms, time to rest up between rejection letters for internships. Now is when we can go to a mindless, vapid comedy and enjoy ourselves before the barrage of finishing school. We've caught up on the important Oscar contenders; we saw our share of depressing foreign films at the film fest. We're owed a movie with at least one good bong joke. \National Lampoon's Van Wilder,"" why have you forsaken us? We just wanted one or two funny jokes.
National Lampoon, the Harvard publication, has been coasting on its past fame for more than a decade. In their magazine, on their Web site, in other magazines' letters sections, the current writers have whined that ""Saturday Night Live"" and The Onion have stolen their form. But they haven't stepped up to the plate with anything worthwhile in years. Now, as they try to compare ""Van Wilder"" with their ""Animal House,"" they thin out their credibility even further.
""Van Wilder""'s loose, episodic plot is summed up easier than it is played out. Ryan Reynolds plays the title character, an immensely likeable guy in his seventh year of college. His father cuts off funding, so he has to make tuition as a party organizer. Tara Reid plays the student journalist sent to get a feature story, and her jerk boyfriend gets jealous and makes himself the bad guy. Around this slim premise hang a bunch of half-finished ideas posing as jokes, further broken up to make room for ""American Pie""-inspired sight gags. If only it had been done well, it could have been just what we were all looking for.
There are a few laughs, though not the ones the movie mugs for. Reid's boyfriend, played by Daniel Cosgrove, is somewhat funny as the pre-med frat president, who inappropriately gives the medical terms for body parts. Reynolds does a nice double take or two. Maybe, there's another funny joke. There's a bulldog with big testicles'is that funny? Even as gross-out comedy, it pretty much falls flat. And they steal the name ""Colon Blow"" from ""SNL"" for the compulsory laxative scene.
At one point, Reynolds asks Reid if she's stalking him, and she says something about a Tupperware party. ""Wait,"" replies Reynolds, ""I'm going to need a judges' ruling on that. Yes, I believe that was a joke."" Maybe that's not the dialogue exactly, but I was too busy calling for my own judges' rulings throughout the whole movie to really pay attention. I'm sure there must have been funny jokes in there somewhere, but they went so far below my head that I missed them. So did everyone else in the theater, apparently.
If you're looking for a better college movie to procrastinate to this spring, rent ""Animal House,"" which still stands up after all these years. Or try ""PCU."" It's not the best, but it's a hundred times funnier than ""Van Wilder."" Then again, just go out and buy a copy of ""Ferris Bueller's Day Off."" That's the one this movie is trying to emulate, only with dog semen jokes instead of heartfelt observation. But, hey, if you're a big fan of poorly executed dog semen jokes, by all means, rush off to the theaters.
