Dumb Studio Exec. #1: “What the world needs now is another gross-out comedy.”
Exec. #2: “Yeah, but how do we push the boundaries of taste?”
“How about a guy drinking semen?”
“Been done.”
“Eureka! A bunch of guys eating eclairs… filled with bulldog jizz!”
“You’re a genius.”
And so the relentlessly moronic, derivative and offensive Van Wilder: Party Liaison was born. Maybe. But, amazingly, this avoids one-star ignominy thanks to some genuine chuckles.
An inoffensive if rather pointless attempt by the National Lampoon team to revisit former glories. As in the beloved frathouse mania of Animal House. Tim Matheson, one of the Delta-house’s former luminaries, even turns up as a stuffy father. However, it becomes increasingly clear no matter how cock-sure and charming is Ryan Reynolds as the titular party liaison he has none of that film’s counter-culture bluster or the borderline insanity of John Belushi. This is a bland revisit that lacked the confidence to go out with the National Lampoon prefix in the USA.
Having Tara Reid as a prim student journalist is a bizarre thought, defined as a makeweight dumb-blonde, here she’s the love interest who will shake Wilder out of his groove. She’s visiting to do a profile on this eternal student, to find, shock, he has no depth at all. But that’s just window dressing, the rest is gratuitous nudity, semen gags, and big toothy grins as if it is all just a bit juvenile fun. It is.
