National Lampoon’s
Van Wilder: The Rise Of Taj

Review By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

In the last few years, Hollywood has flooded the market with gross-out sex comedies. The sheer number of these comedies probably hasn’t been seen since the subgenre’s original wave during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

However, as these kind of comedies up the ante to push the envelope in levels of sheer over-the-top grossness and sexuality, laughs and even any sort of remotely coherent story are sadly sacrificed. National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Rise Of Taj, which is now available on DVD, is such a film.

This sequel continues the story of former frat-outcast-turned-Van-Wilder-protegee Taj Mahal Badalandabad (Kal Penn). He’s now graduated from Coolidge College and goes off to England with his dog Balzac to the elite Camford University as a graduate student and embarks on an apprenticeship as a teacher’s assistant.

He hopes to join the prestigious fraternity of Fox And Hounds and live up to the ranks of his father’s lady-killing glory days. However, his hopes are dashed as the aristocratic fraternity, led by the rich and arrogant Earl Of Grey, Pipp Everett (Daniel Percival), informs Taj that there’s been a typographical mistake and ends up banishing the newcomer to a fraternity known as The Barn.

The Barn is made up of misfits who Taj soon discovers got a similar response from the Fox and Hounds. They include drunken, ill-tempered Irishman Seamus O’Toole (Glen Barry), mathematical and scientifically-skilled nerd Gethin (Anthony Corzins), silent and socially-withdrawn video game freak Simon (Steven Rathman), and well-endowed Sadie (Holly Davidson), who has a penchant for always speaking in vulgar Cockney.

Taj decides to band together his new charges and rechristen them as the Cock And Bulls to compete against Fox And Hounds and other fraternities to win the prestigious Hastings Cup. As they rise in the ranks, the rivalry between the two fraternal guilds grows more intense as Taj soon falls in love with his supervisor Charlotte Higginson (Lauren Cohan), who is also Pipp’s girlfriend.

Kal Penn and much of the principal cast make valiant strides in making their thinly-written characters likable and engaging or, in the case of Daniel Percival’s incredibly wicked Pipp character, deviously villainous. However, their efforts are crumbled against the numerous flaws that sap away any potential in the film.

What hurts the film more than anything is its train wreck of a script. The film’s plot is an incredibly incoherent mix of both Revenge Of The Nerds and the greatest film to bear the National Lampoon brand, Animal House.

Adding insult to injury, the film’s crudity meter is off-the-charts without any of it being very funny. There is poor and downright unfunny dialogue, more gratuitous topless girl shots than you can