Don't Graduate. Celebrate.
2002-03-29
$6.0M
92 min
Van Wilder has been attending college for far too many years and is scared to graduate, but Van’s father eventually realizes what is going on. When he stops paying his son's tuition fees, Van must come up with the money if he wants to stay in college, so he and his friends come up with a great fund-raising idea – throwing parties. However, when the college magazine finds out and reporter, Gwen is sent to do a story on Van Wilder, things get a little complicated.
I'm not exactly what one might call "in to" American comedies, and gross out humour/romantic comedies are pretty much at the bottom of even that list. For a movie that most certainly contains both those two things (the latter in especially heavy doses), I actually didn't mind Van Wilder that much. But it's all about context, if instead of comparing it to a list of similar things that I hate you compared it to, say, the entire history of cinema overall, then National Lampoon's Van Wilder is pretty bad.
One additional note, the friend of mine who I put this on for told me that the movie was from the era of "When Tara Reid was still hot". Now personally I've never found any iteration of her attractive, but it did make me have a parallel thought, is Van Wilder from the era when Tara Reid was a better actor? I'm not saying she has been some sort of Oscar-worthy great at any stage, but if I compare her in this to her in, for example, Sharknado 47, despite the extra years of experience, she's definitely worse now, right?
Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product.
