Quartile rating: 6/10 · 2 ratings
Van Wilder has been attending college for far too many years and is scared to graduate, but Van’s father eventually realizes what is going on. When he stops paying his son's tuition fees, Van must come up with the money if he wants to stay in college, so he and his friends come up with a great fund-raising idea – throwing parties. However, when the college magazine finds out and reporter, Gwen is sent to do a story on Van Wilder, things get a little complicated.
National Lampoon's Van Wilder is a fairly generic early-2000s sex comedy that hits familiar beats of the slacker-genius college archetype. Ryan Reynolds brings natural charisma but the material is formulaic, the romance arc predictable, and the crude humor (laxative brownies, etc.) is shock-for-shock's-sake. Cinematography is unremarkable TV-level work, the plot borrows liberally from Animal House and similar predecessors, and the ending resolves exactly as expected. Nothing stands out as genuinely exceptional or genuinely terrible — it's a solidly mediocre entry in a crowded genre.