Van Wilder: Party Liaison [DVD] [2002]

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Product Description ------------------- To Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds), college doesn't get you ready for life, it is life. So when his her puts a stop to his cash flow, it looks like the party might finally be over for Van. .co.uk Review ------------- 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 Liaison contains 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 s 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 Pie ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004R7ES/%24%7B0%7D ) again instead. --Paul Eisinger