REEL REVIEWS COLUMN: The Van drives Wildly
By Nick Tintori and Micah Riordan
In the time honored tradition of National Lampoon’s, excluding the rectal nugget “Senior Trip” and “Vegas Vacation,” is a movie that is rarely done today. “Van Wilder” is its name and college life is its game.
The movie’s idea about college life is so fresh because no one has done it before. Wait, almost every movie today has something about college in it. That’s right, this idea has almost worn itself out. What we would have done without another college movie?
To be totally honest, this movie wasn’t what we expected. Most movies like this look funny from the previews, but the actual movie totally sucks, i.e. “Orange County.”
This movie was great all the way through and had some stuff that even we could not think of.
The movie is about a guy named Van Wilder, played by Ryan Reynolds from the TV show, “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Parlor.” He has been at college for seven years. Hey there’s nothing wrong with that if you’re going to be a doctor or the coolest kid on campus with a rich father.
Well in this case, Van doesn’t have a clue what he is going to do. Despite being loved by everyone in the school, except a couple of jakalaks, his father has stopped paying for his tuition. He has to come up with the money to stay in school and keep the party going.
This problem brings most of the funny elements in the movies and it’s where this slacker of a movie magically transforms into a good one. People notice Van’s huge talent for throwing a kick ass party so everyone wants to hire him to throw a party for them. These parties are as wild as his name implies.
In the end some wild deeds are done and the people seeing the movie are changed forever like the people in the movie.
The movie is outrageously funny and ranks up there with the likes of “Animal House,” another Lampoon’s classic. The movie was great and has returned Lampoon’s to the great comedy giant that it was during the 80’s.
We give this movie a B+