National Lampoon's Van Wilder

For some reason, college comedies featuring amazingly gross jokes, stock funny-person stereotypes and acres of T&A have gotten a bad attitude lately. Films like "How High" and "Slackers" come up with the right kinds of jokes but kill the humor with misplaced superciliousness and casual cruelty. "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," by contrast, treats its characters with respect and a knowing chuckle. It's amazing how jokes about dog semen, laxative-induced public defecation and sex-obsessed Indian exchange students become both hilarious and charming when approached with the right geniality, and "Van Wilder" has that geniality the whole way through.

The filmmakers seem to have wisely taken their cues from Van Wilder, who is a title character and not a new vandalism practice, and who is played with beatific serenity and unflappable coolness by the quite-handsome Ryan Reynolds. Van Wilder has, by his seventh year at Coolidge College, transcended the label of Big Man on Campus; he's someone without whom the campus could barely function. He gives pep talks to the basketball team, hosts fundraisers for the swim team, and throws the slamminest' parties Coolidge has ever seen. He never has a harsh word for even the most moronic questioner, and is beloved by staff and student body alike. Graduate? Hardly. He has found his niche, and excels in it. And Dad's paying the bills.

That is, until one of Dad's underlings tells him exactly how long Van's been matriculating. (You get a sense of the kind of fathering Van has endured.) The funds are cut off, and Van is hard up - until he gets a plea from a nerdy fraternity to throw them a party they can be proud of, with cold hard cash for Van if he can deliver.

Meanwhile, Gwen Pearson (Tara Reid) investigates Van for the school paper, which has been indulging her social-crusader bent by publishing stories on euthanasia and such on the front page. Diamondback readers will hope than Van loosens her up and gets her to write movie reviews, but unfortunately she has some reservations about Van's supercasual style. On the other hand, supercasualness contrasts favorably with the amazing uptightness of her current boyfriend, the petty fraternity dictator and self-obsessed premed Richard Bagg (Daniel Cosgrove, sneering with tremendous comic ferocity). If you don't know by now who ends up with whom and what lessons are learned, it's going to take you a lot longer than seven years to graduate from college.

While the film does indeed contain jokes of the type mentioned above, and a lot of stuff of about the same noxiousness level, Reynolds takes it all in such easy stride and with such goodwill for his fellow humans that you concentrate less on the nominal noxiousness and more on the real, hearty laughs provided. And these are good jokes; besides the grossers, the National Lampooners who wrote this one spice the proceedings by providing plenty of tasty one-liners. ("Was she a freshman?" Pearson asks of a near-miss Wilder conquest. "Yes, but she reads at a sophomore level," Wilder effortlessly counters.) Director Walt Becker knows his comic timing and keeps the camera firmly focused on Reynolds or Cosgrove, and while that doesn't sound like much, films of this ilk screw it up pretty regularly. All this good stuff allows one to ignore Tara Reid, whose spectral thinness and vapid acting can never really disturb Reynolds' effortless comic virtuosity.

In fact, "Van Wilder" sometimes glides along too effortlessly; the sheer rabid desperation and exuberance that fueled "National Lampoon's Animal House," to which the present film must inevitably be compared, find no place here. Those people who assert that all true comedy is forged in pain will undoubtedly mock the essential good-heartedness of this film, even as it slops the gross-outs up there with extreme exuberance. But honestly, these college comedies, in which any bodily substance can be found anywhere at any time and everyone is more attractive than anyone you know, sit too far removed from reality to be improved by some contrived tribulation or gratuitous mean-spiritedness.

It took National Lampoon's filmic arm to remind us of that, and not coincidentally arrest its own precipitous decline, with "Van Wilder." And that is good news indeed for fans of stupid collegiate comedies everywhere.

TARA REID IS TOTALLY TOTALLY WEIRD

I don't know who decided that Tara Reid was (a) attractive, (b) an acceptable actress or (c) box-office gold, but I disagree on all three counts.

Count (a): At the end of "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," Reid confronts Ryan Reynolds in very little clothing, having shaken off her former disdain for wearing very little clothing. Well and good; such personality transformations are normally to be celebrated in this type of the movie. But Tara Reid has no - repeat, no - curves of any kind below her chest. She makes Carmen Electra look like Marilyn Monroe.

This, combined with that startled-bunny-rabbit smile she wears half the time, lowers her to second tier. (This is, of course, among movie stars. She's more attractive than most human beings, including yours truly. But if I wanted to see normal human beings I wouldn't go to a movie theater; I'd just sit around at Farragut Square watching the human beings passing me by. More fresh air and sunshine than actually going into the MPAA.)

Count (b): This is not hard to argue if you watch "National Lampoon's Van Wilder." She's almost lifelike in "American Pie" and its sequel, but mostly because she's playing a vaguely weird blond chick, I think. Here, however, she is supposed to be playing The Sensible One, and she comes off as the weirdest sensible chick ever.

Count (c): "American Pie": Phenomenally successful film in which Tara Reid was featured prominently. "American Pie 2" featured Tara Reid in an essentially decorative role which could have been snipped out of the whole movie without anything besides the statement "The whole cast is back!" being negatively affected. "Pie 2" made even more money. Coincidence? Methinks not.

This is not to say you should not see "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," because if you like films like this you definitely should. But I had to rag on Reid somewhere.

TOP SHILLIN'

Matt Cowal, the only publicity person cool enough to be on the Spam-O-Matic, informed me that Artisan is looking to use college-media quotes in the ads, rather than relying on Elvis Mitchell and David Denby for compact, buzz-generating squibs. I immediately abstracted some juicy tidbits from the review above and sent them off. Will my name be featured on national advertising, in ludicrously small letters underneath a quote with exclamation points I never wrote? Well, I'd sure like it. What more can I say?

And since you understood...

This didn't end up happening - I didn't say anything quite pithy and laudatory enough, or make any memorable dog-semen puns - but it was nice of Matt to notify me of the opportunity, and I appreciate it.

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