National Lampoon’s Van Wilder

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National Lampoon’s Van Wilder
Distributed by
Artisan Home Entertainment

    Cover

  • Cert: R
  • Cat.no: 12891
  • Running time: 93 minutes
  • Year: 2002
  • Pressing: 2002
  • Region(s): 1, NTSC
  • Chapters: 19
  • Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
  • Languages: English
  • Subtitles: English, Spanish
  • Widescreen: 1.85:1; Full Frame: 1.33:1
  • 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
  • Macrovision: Yes
  • Disc Format: 2 * DVD 9
  • Price: $26.98
  • Extras:Deleted scenes, outtakes, Comedy Central special, Burly Bear TVspecials, music video, music of Van Wilder, campaign art gallery, TVspots, trailer gallery, trailers, cast and crew, production notes.

    Director:

      Walt Becker

Screenplay:

    Brent Goldberg and David T. Wagner

Cast:

    Van Wilder: Ryan Reynolds
    Gwen Pearson: Tara Reid
    Taj: Kel Penn
    Hutch: Teck Holmes
    Richard: Daniel Casgrove
    Jeannie: Emily Rutherfurd

National Lampoonreturns after a five year hiatus. Their last film,Senior Vacation, was tolerable but obviously lacking the energy of theirprevious efforts. After the five year hiatus, what have they been up to?Not much, apparently, as this cliched story shows. It uses every clichein the teen movie library and badly I might add. For such a teen moviehater as myself, it’s wierd why I review so many but this one is thelast, I swear it. While not as bad as Slackers, this is a lacklustereffort in all.

This movie tells the story of college freshman Van Wilder, who has beenat Coolidge (who came up with that?) College for seven years. Of coursethe student body sees him as a legend and a perfect loser who they allwish they could be. When Van’s father, cuts his tuition funds, he mustfind a way to stay in college and attract reporter Gwen Pearson whilehe’s at it. It’s a pretty basic plot that is forgotten for awhile untilthe last few minutes of the movie.

So much of this is just overdone that you can tell the writers werescratching for jokes. Most of the jokes are lowbrow and unfunny whileothers are just teetering that line between tolerable and gross outfest. There are a few saving graces that prevent this from totaldisaster. Some of the original National Lampoon members return and ascene or two was funny. Which scenes, I cannot remember which tell youhow forgetable this movie is. The back of the box touts this as “..theAnimal House for the new generation!”, yeah right.

Artisan has released two versions of the movie in the form of unratedand rated. I reviewed the R rated edtion due to the fact that when Ifound out there was another version it was too late. It should be notedthat the unrated contains only one minute of extra footage and a uniquemenu design (more about this later). All other aspects are the same.(DVDfever Ed: “I could only find the unrated DVD cover online”)

Into the disc. Two versions are included on disc one, widescreen andfull frame presentations. Why they would include a full frame transferof a movie that is only 1.85:1 in scope is beyond me. Anyway, thewidescreen version is presented in decent quality. Colors are just kindof muted and their is some grain apparent. No pixelization was noticedbut some scratches on the print appeared. Blacks are solid enough butlike I said, the transfer just as an unexciting look to it.

The sound is offered in two formats as well, both english, 5.1 and 2.0tracks. Both tracks fit the movie well and dialouge is audiblethroughout. Again, this is all that matters with a comedy.

Now here’s the surpise. Artisan has released this lackluster movie as atwo disc special edition. Huh? I think maybe it’s just because ofNational Lampoon having a cult following because this movie didn’texactly ignite the box office. Anyway, this is a very good supplementpackage. Deleted scenes, 4 tv specials in all, and campaign material arejust a sample. In fact, this is a little more filled than another comedytroupe’s DVD effort Monty Python and the Holy Grail special edition.Somewhere this movie might have fans and those people will be happy. Iwish they would have included a commentary track with the cast though.

This is the first movie where I will mention the menus (something I willtry to do from now on) and for good reason. The menus are “hosted” by awoman’s front side with the options being on her shirt. All the while,she is moving, still allowing you to select whatever. Select whichformat you want to watch it in and she’ll actually remove her shirt. Ifyou’re watching the R rated version then a censored bar will greet youbut owners of the unrated version will see her….uncensored. Thesemenus are pretty cool but that’s probably just because I’m a guy. Verydifferent as I’ve never known a DVD menu to have nudity.

Overall, despite the bad movie, the extras are top notch and should notgo overlooked. This is one of Artisan’s more elaborate special editions(with T2: Ultimate Edition and the Reservoir Dogs Special Edition beingthe exception) and it even has a new kind of menu design. Too bad themovie had to be there too.

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL
Review copyright © Traveta, 2002.

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