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Van Wilder: Party Liaison [2002]


RRP: £15.99
Our Price: £4.37 (subject to change)

Editorial
Amazon.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 shots 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 again instead. --Paul Eisinger


Do not buy this junk
Review date: 2008-09-08 Rating: 2 out of 10

Not many words needed:

Be warned: You may throw up during this movie!

Those under fifteen are not permittted to watch it (thank good), and I STRONGLY advice everybody else not to. If you for some abnormal reason find it funny watching guys eating huge ammounts of warm dogs semen, you may have my copy, but hurry its allready in the garbage.

Give us "Three guys, a girl and a pizza place" now!

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Reviews


PARTY ANIMAL
Review date: 2007-04-06 Rating: 8 out of 10

What this movie has and other movies lack are characters you admire and care about. The movie never succumbs to sentimentality, thankfully, and it keeps a high level of cheerfulness and humor through the entire running time. This is a movie that wants to party and have fun, where characters are in high spirits and at times a little inebriated. This is the movie that will put the National Lampoon franchise back into respectability. Not only is this movie gut-bustingly funny - if you can get past the crude visual puns like a pit-bull with what looks like a ten-pound scrotum attachment, and a crotch-enhancer pump that is mistaken for a bong - this transcendent comedy of gross manners is most affecting because it's incredibly well-made. Most college campus comedies are cheap in production value and clumsily structured. Van Wilder is exceedingly well-paced and smartly written, by writers Brent Goldberg and David T. Wagner (their love for Ferris Bueller is apparent) who know how to set up not only a joke but sequences of offhand slapstick that are irrepressibly absurd. Director Walter Becker (creator of the ingenious short-film Saving Ryan's Privates) handles the irreverent and random acts of background physical comedy with ease and panache.

The campus wild man is fittingly known as Van Wilder (played by Ryan Reynolds). Van Wilder is a guy that has friends from everywhere, from the jocks to the nerds. Reynolds finds a precarious balance between recklessness and cheerful insanity, which is crucial because he turns acts of humanitarian philanthropy into casual and spontaneous gestures without giving second thought. No job is ever too big for the man, whether it is becoming the de-facto basketball coach that inspires the school's team to win or setting up a rockin' party for the geekiest fraternity on campus. Van Wilder has enthusiastic support from everyone but his burned-out workaholic father (played by Tim Matheson, once the wild man in National Lampoon's Animal House) who decides after seven years of his son's enrollment to stop tuition payment.

Van Wilder becomes the subject of a school newspaper editorial and Tara Reid plays the snobby, uptight reporter Gwen whose ties belong to frat boy Richard Bagg (Daniel Cosgrove), who conducts hazing rituals that are crueler than anything since Animal House. When Gwen tries to get the naked truth from Van Wilder, she mostly just finds Van Wilder naked. But it's the smart rapport that develops between them that allows Van Wilder to strip Gwen's inhibitions, to let her walk on the wild side. In the background, a turf war erupts between Van Wilder and Richard.

The plotting is shameless in its methods of revenge. There are innocent people involved in the mayhem, including a scene where pre-pubescent boys raid one of Van Wilder's parties and end up barfing out of a school bus (but hey, these young boys had the time of their life until then). Richard's fraternity brothers are sent a basket full of éclairs stuffed with juices from a particular dormitory pet. In a knock-off homage to Dumb and Dumber, a character digests a bottle of colon blow right before he is to take a final exam.

The movie rarely takes a breath. It does settle for easy chuckles but goes for the comic gold, pushing past the ribbon of where comedy usually wears out in exhaust. Not every joke works, but you admire the efforts that the filmmakers went to in order to make you laugh. A virgin's first encounter with a girl that culminates in a massage oil rubdown gets more than messy and squanders too much, thus not earning any laughs. A scene where Van Wilder has to charm a raggedy and prunish administrator gets frighteningly explicit and goes on maybe one shot too many. But Van Wilder is always the man of the moment. One of the dorky characters goes to Van Wilder to ask him how to `muff dive.' Ultimately, Van Wilder is king and his rebel-bent philosophy is trippingly funny. At the end, you won't be able to remember all the funny scenes because there are just too many of them.

Thank you for reading my review.

Jim Carrey wannbe fails to impress
Review date: 2006-11-30 Rating: 2 out of 10

This film is a steaming pile of cow-dung - write THAT down!.
Quite possibly the most unfunny and weak teen comedy of recent years. Ryan Reynolds styles his entire 'acting' range around a bad Jim Carrey impression and fails miserably, he has zero charisma. The 'jokes', if you can call them that, are the same old tired formula you'd have seen in a million other teen/college movies of the past, but whereas many of those movies did them justice, 'Van Wilder's efforts are so weak they fizzle out before they've even started. Just avoid at all costs!

Pure legend, write that down.
Review date: 2006-04-26 Rating: 10 out of 10

This is a great film with lots of laughes, the sort of film that gets you giggling at the memory of it.

Plus if you like Tara Reid she's looking stunning in this film and you just have to believe what she says as the last line of the film (I won't spoil it fella's but trust me you'll know what I mean when you watch it).

"If he's here...who's running hell?"
Review date: 2006-02-23 Rating: 10 out of 10

I bought this film for my 16 year old daughter who fell in love with Ryan Reynolds after seeing him in Blade Trinity. (A mighty Phwooooar could also be heard from me!) I have got to say that this film hasn't left the dvd player since it arrived home!

I am slightly offended by another reviewers comments that parents will all find this film too immature. Not all us mums and dads are old farts! I have watched this over and over again, and have even sneaked it out of my daughters dvd player late at night and watched it downstairs on my own, all the while smothering my face with a cushion to muffle my laughter!

The whole film screams of pure comedy genius. Everything about it is just hilarious, including 'that' cake scene! The one liners are heard daily in my house and now also at my daughter's school.

If you enjoyed the American Pies, Road Trip and Say It Isn't So, multiply your enjoyment by about 100% and that's roughly the amount you'll get out of this!

Write That Down!

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Kal Penn
Tim Matheson
Tara Reid
Ryan Reynolds
Teck Holmes

Creators:
Ryan Reynolds (Primary Contributor)
Tara Reid (Primary Contributor)
Andrew Panay (Producer)
Ari Newman (Producer)
Jeff Franks (Producer)
Jonathon Komack Martin (Producer)
Kirk D'Amico (Producer)
Brent Goldberg (Writer)
David Wagner (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Momentum Pictures
Manufacturer: Momentum Pictures
EAN: 5060049140032
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2003-06-30
Number of discs: 1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 89 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2002-04-05
Language: English (Original Language)

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