FilmBuff1994 Van Wilder: Party Liaison is an awful movie with a storyline that seemed interesting but turned out terrible and a great comedic cast that are wasted by a brutal script.The movie is just one ridiculous joke after another,I literally didn't properly laugh at any scene,a lot of parts were just purposely disgusting,like the part with the dog and the twinkies,I don't see how anyone could write something like that and expect people to find it funny instead of just plain gross.I really like Ryan Reynolds as an actor and he's gone on to prove after this film that he can definitely act,but Van Wilder was just an annoying character that I found very unlikeable and wasn't rooting for him throughout this film,the only character who's scenes I enjoyed in any way was Kal Penn's character.Van Wilder: Party Liaison is a terrible movie that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Van Wilder,a student who's been attending college for seven years and showing no sign of leaving,realizes that he is afraid to face the real world when a journalist starts writing about him. Best Performance: Kal Penn Worst Performance: Daniel Cosgrove

wes-connors During his seventh year at "Coolidge" college, handsome Ryan Reynolds (as Van Wilder) gets his tuition cut off by father Tim Matheson (as Van Wilder Sr.), an embarrassed "Animal House" (1978) alumni. When Mr. Matheson finds his son wearing a women's negligee at an underwear swap party, he fears Reynolds might be gay; obviously, Matheson doesn't catch on very fast anymore. However, Mr. Reynolds is enterprising young man; he uses his supposedly large genitalia to stay in school...Arousing blonde reporter Tara Reid (as Gwen Pearson) does a story on Reynolds. He turns from promiscuous and partying to thinking Ms. Reid might be that "special someone." For some reason, Reid's premature ejaculating boyfriend Daniel Cosgrove (as Richard Bagg) maintains a hold on Reid. For what it's worth, Mr. Cosgrove actually performs his role well. "Van Wilder" delivers lots of fart and balls humor, some beer and breasts, a few gay jokes... all climaxing in a huge dump.** Van Wilder (4/4/02) Walt Becker ~ Ryan Reynolds, Tara Reid, Daniel Cosgrove, Tim Matheson

all-accounts I had the displeasure of watching Van Wilder for the first and last time last night. Oh how it still burns in my head. This poor film suffers from some odd sort of cinematic schizophrenia: sometimes it thinks it wants to be animal house as it's stereotypical "frat-boy-cum-slave-driver" uses unidentified and nameless students as croquet posts and tunnels, and sometimes it wants to be a sentimental love story. This movie feels like a string of barely related pranks and humor that was patch-worked together with something akin to a plot. Our hero, the amiable and misguided but otherwise kind hearted Van Wilder is every college boys wet dream of a self-image: Intelligent but not too intelligent, clever with comebacks, interested in finer things like love and friends and disinterested in having a life revolving around work, living off his fathers bank account, campus celebrity, blah blah blah.... I'm sure you've probably seen this before and it was much better as a high school movie called "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", or was it "Animal House", or maybe this film just tries to lamely take concepts from these better films and update them for a newer audience. Whatever it is it's pure crap.I've never seen such sick humor outside of a Troma Studios movie. At least with a Troma release you expect lots of feces, vomit, sick humor involving children and a plot as absurd as the premise. But in Van Wilder you get all the vomit, sperm and abuse with a plot they think you might care about. Boy has it good, boy gets told by father that he will not receive more easy money, boy has roaring good time as he crunches many business opportunities to raise money so he can continue with his chosen looserly lifestyle, boy meets overtly-cute pseudo-intelligent girl who wants an interview for the school paper, and wait for the surprise... Boy falls in love with girl who has boyfriend in the snottiest frat on campus. Bet you didn't see that coming. Bet you don't see the friction, pranks and insults that go on between Frat boy and Van Wilder. But then again, I am sure you do.The shining moments of the movie are only so because they will stay burned in your brain for days afterwards. Take for instance the continual shots of Van's bulldog's obviously fake, over-sized testicles which will fill your screen on occasion. You will get endlessly entertained by swaying testicles, floating hot-tub testicles, Van kissing dog testicles in an early morning surprise. As if the large testicles weren't enough we get one of the most disturbing scenes in movie history when Van plots revenge against his rival, the boyfriend of the main love interest of course, by removing the cream filling of eclairs using gynecological instruments only to be refilled by having his friend masturbate the dog to create a new and exciting filling. But wait! There's more! Once the many eclairs are full and the dogs testicles are now down to a normal, smaller pair, they are placed casually and suspiciously outside the snotty frat-house. Oh the horror as for quite a while we are treated to many frat boys voraciously enjoying every gooey, warm, drippy, clear drop of the dog sperm from the eclair as they make obvious comments like "Wow, they're still warm" and "I think I have had these before". Trust me, much time is dedicated to this scene and.... Damn. I used to love eclairs.There is a lot of really easy and simple humor in this movie. Let's have an Indian student talk about dirty sex as it will be funny just for that accent. Or maybe we can get elementary school kids drunk and have them projectile vomit. Let's have strippers who fart smoke, that's cool.?? This movie has none of the charm of Beavis and Butthead, none of the stylistic unapologetic crassness of a Troma Film, And the plot is soooooo predictable and merely a rehash of almost every bad college film in history. It's the same plot as One Crazy Summer but not even close to funny and that film used Curtis Armstrong in a way that we all laughed at. In this film he has been degraded to a momentary laugh and no character at all. No body in this film gets fleshed out, the only thing remote to character development is the exchange student gets laid and Van Wilder comes to understand why he hasn't left college in 7 years and trust me that part is about as deep as a dog-bowl.I wish I had something nice to say about this movie. Even Showgirls is enjoyable for it's embarrassing attempt at seriousness, but this piece of work has no redeeming qualities. The only truly funny moment is as the credits roll and we see some of the behind the scenes pranks with several characters playing up homosexual elements that were only hinted at in the film. I'm sorry but I can't even recommend this film. Avoid it all costs.

Stampsfightclub College student and party enthusiast Van Wilder (Reynolds) is put in his place by an unavailable up and coming reporter (Reid) There have been many attempts at conveying the real life portrayal of school life in cinema over the last 10 years. From the largely successful crude American Pie to the down right tough nut drama Kidulthood there are many versions of how college life is seen. To generalise, most American films centre on the comedy genre when tackling these stories whilst British cinema aims to portray realism, and at the end of the day everything is exaggerated, but is marvellously funny and entertaining nonetheless, and the same goes for this almost American Pie riff.Ryan Reynolds is the main reason to watch as with all his previous roles he brings that contained side of cheekiness to his character and executes his comic timing to perfection with some well spoken phrases and equally amusing physical attributes. Though his comedy isn't on the brilliance of Just friends, he generates a feeling of coolness and gets the laughs that this genre always needs.As these are films about aging students, there are always repetitive ideologies encoded for the preferred reading. So we have sex, parties, losing virginity and "complicated" relationships. If you thought American Pie was crude, wait till this hits your screen. There is one particular moment that is irrevocable. Lets just say a dog and a spatula get a less than pleasant introduction, not to mention Wilder's sacrifice to get a form to carry on learning. It is definitely crude with that sense of physical comedy that we teens apparently love so much.As there is plenty of comedy there is still enough room to match the cheesy conventional plot that follows the rule book practically word for word. Well, to be fair the plot is springy because of the comedy input, but once more in this genre does a guy have to like the one girl he can't have and it's only going to end up one way. If this was tweaked a bit to add some surprise and energy we may have had a different feeling come the credits and feeling rewarded for the film's diversity, but once more we pay money to see the same concept repeated except with some fresh faces.Apart from the weighing down involvement of the conventional romance ideology, this is a very enjoyable picture. The characters, all pretty much stereotypes, bring their own spice to the plot, especially the teacher and Wilder's assistant Taj. We have the geeks, the jocks, the scientists, the swingers and so forth. All familiar and therefore its easy to transfer into entertainment. There is no silly character development and we are left with simply the person on screen with their own agenda.Van Wilder is a simple crude story wrapped with a wonderful central performance by Reynolds. Where this 2001 picture won't give fans the same satisfaction and buoyancy as American Pie or Euro trip, there is enough crude comedy to reward the target youthful audience for their money.