National Lampoon's Van Wilder
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| National Lampoon's Van Wilder | |
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 Van Wilder film poster |
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| Directed by | Walt Becker |
| Produced by | Peter Abrams, Robert L. Levy, Jonathon Komack Martin |
| Written by | Brent Goldberg, David T. Wagner |
| Starring | Ryan Reynolds, Tara Reid, Kal Penn |
| Distributed by | Artisan Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | April 5, 2002 |
| Running time | 93 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | ~ US$5,000,000 |
| Followed by | National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj |
| IMDb profile | |
National Lampoon's Van Wilder (also known as Van Wilder, Van The Man and Van Wilder: Party Liaison) is a 2002 comedy movie directed by Walt Becker and stars Ryan Reynolds as the titular character. The film also stars Kal Penn, Tara Reid and Daniel Cosgrove.
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[edit] Taglines
- Tagline: No party gets started until it gets Wilder.
- Tagline (alt): Don't graduate. Celebrate.
- Tagline (UK): It's the Mutt's Nuts!!!
[edit] Plot Synopsis
Van Wilder is an outgoing, friendly, and extremely popular student who has been at Coolidge College for seven years. For the past three years he has made no effort to graduate, instead spending his time organizing parties and fundraisers, doing charity work, helping other students, and posing for figure drawing classes. But after seven years with no return, Van's father decides it is time to cut his losses and stop paying tuition. Instead of leaving, Van decides to find some other way to pay his way through the rest of college.
Meanwhile Gwen Pearson, a star reporter for the student newspaper, is asked to do an article on him for the front page of the graduation issue. Although that would be extremely important to her, she is rather put off when Van interprets her attempts to schedule an interview as romantic advances — especially because she already has a boyfriend. Gwen's boyfriend, Richard Bagg, happens to be the president of the student union, and the leader of a fraternity. He takes personal offense at Wilder's attempts to steal his girlfriend, and becomes very stressed out due to having to deal with this burden on top of preparing for medical school and leading the Delta Iota Kappa fraternity, leading to a brutal rivalry between Bagg and Wilder.
The rivalry grows as they perform increasingly disgusting pranks to each other. For instance, one scene involves Richard inviting Van over to a dinner with him and Gwen's family to prove a point to them about Van's lackadaisical attitude towards life (in which Gwen's parents are only pleased by Van's easy-going attitude, and Gwen, who becomes increasingly turned off by Richard's stress, only feels that Richard's motives were too low-handed.) In one infamous scene, Van and his friends replace the cream inside some pastries with dog semen and send them to Richard's fraternity, Delta Iota Kappa. At one point, Richard also sleeps with another woman from a sorority, which would be a final straw for Gwen later on. Richard also sets up a party for Van in which there are some (very) underage drinkers and reports it to the police, which leads to Van being considered for expulsion. However, Van proposes an alternative punishment: that the school force him to finish one more semester and graduate. The committee agrees to this by a three-to-two decision. Gwen is pleased that Van is taking the initiative to get his life together; also, to get back at Richard's liaison earlier, on the day of a test that appeared to be his MCAT exam and an interview with Northwestern Medical School, she laces the milkshake he enjoyed every morning with a laxative. Since there are no bathroom breaks allowed during the test, Richard has to hurry through the 2-hour exam in 20 minutes, "dialing down the middle" towards the end and disgusting the other test-takers with flatulence, and before he can reach the bathroom he unexpectedly runs into the medical school interview committee, and ends up defecating into a trash can right in front of them, and he is never seen again in the film (presumably, his medical school dreams are ruined, as he mentions to Van in a deleted scene.) Meanwhile, Van Wilder does well on his finals and celebrates his graduation with Gwen.
[edit] Cast
- Ryan Reynolds as Vance "Van" Wilder Jr.
- Tara Reid as Gwen E. Pearson
- Kal Penn as Taj Mahal Badalandabad
- Paul Gleason as Professor McDougal
- Tim Matheson as Vance Wilder Sr.
- Daniel Cosgrove as Richard "Dick" Bagg
- Teck Holmes as Hutch
- Emily Rutherford as Jeannie
- Tom Everett Scott as Elliot Grebb (uncredited)
- Deon Richmond as "Mini Cochran"
- Alex Burns as Gordon
[edit] Box office totals
- Budget - $5,000,000
- Marketing cost - $15,000,000
- Opening Weekend Gross (Domestic) - $7,302,913
- Total Domestic Grosses - $21,305,259
- Total Overseas Grosses - $16,970,224
- Total Worldwide Grosses - $38,275,483
- Estimated Profit - $21,051,515
[edit] Trivia
- Penn and Reynolds would reunite again in another college-themed movie Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. Penn had the starring role while Reynolds had a cameo as a nurse. During a famous scene in this movie, Reynolds, Penn and Teck Holmes' characters are in hospital scrubs and Penn dabs Reynolds forehead from sweat like a nurse. In Harold & Kumar, the roles are reversed between Penn and Reynolds, and the latter hits on the former.
- Though Ryan Reynolds played the title character, he was listed fourth among actors in the credits of film
- Johnny Lechner, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who has been attending college since 1994 (13 consecutive years), has been dubbed "the real-life Van Wilder", however he has overstayed the real Van Wilder's college tenure.
- Tim Matheson, star of National Lampoon's original college classic Animal House, plays Van's father.
- Actors Erik Estrada (CHiPs), and Edie McClurg (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) all have cameos.
- NBA players Darius Miles, Quentin Richardson, Lamar Odom, and Michael Olowokandi all appear in cameos as Coolidge Chickadee varsity basketball players.
- The writers of the film make appearances as students auditioning to be Van's assistant(s) in one of the first scenes of the film. Also, the director, Walt Becker has a small part as a fireman after Taj's failed attempt to have sex with Naomi.
- Supporting actors Curtis Armstrong (Revenge of the Nerds) and Tom Everett Scott (Dead Man on Campus) have both appeared in previous hit "college comedies."
- The film/DVD menus use four songs performed by Sugarcult.
- A sequel, without Ryan Reynolds and starring Taj (Kal Penn), was released December 1, 2006. It is titled National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj.
- Richard Bagg is part of the fraternity Delta Iota Kappa, or as Van points out, 'DIK.' ("Richard...you never told me you were a DIK! [then, quietly, as taking drink] Not that you had to.")
- Features the first screen appearance by Sophia Bush, who plays Sally, a freshman who attempts (nearly successfully) to seduce Van after he gets drunk upon supposedly finding out Gwen and Richard were engaged. According to Van, "she reads at a sophomore level". She also has never heard of Air Supply.
- Many scenes of the movie were filmed at UCLA.
[edit] Music
Featured in the film are songs by Jimmy Eat World, Sum 41, Abandoned Pools, Sugarcult, N.E.R.D., American Hi-Fi, Tahiti 80, Zero 7's Sia Furler, and Swirl 360, most of which were popular on the airwaves. Artemis Records released the official soundtrack, though the tracklisting does not exactly match the lineup heard in the movie. It omits the Sugarbomb song "Hello", likely because it had already appeared on the soundtrack of Orange County, a film released just two months prior to Van Wilder and popular with the same target audience.
[edit] Quotes
- "You know what I've learned in my seven years here at Coolidge? Timmy? I've learned that you can't treat every situation as life-and-death matter... because you'll die a lot of times."
- "I learned a long time ago that worrying is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.”
- "They said I did them a Mitzvah. That's Yiddish for 'good deed.'"
- "Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive."
- "All you need are the three fundamentals: Scented candles, massage oil, and Barry White.”
- "Write that down."
- "Her name's Naomi. That's 'I Moan' backwards"
