Movies - National Lampoon's Van Wilder

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	Movies - National Lampoon's Van Wilder

National Lampoon's Van Wilder (also known as Van Wilder, Van The Man and Van Wilder: Party Liaison) is a 2002 movie directed by Walt Becker and stars Ryan Reynolds as the titular young philanthropist/party animal.

Cast

Ryan Reynolds
as Vance "Van" Wilder Jr.
Tara Reid
as Gwen E. Pearson
Kal Penn
as Taj Majal Badalandabad
Paul Gleason
as Professor McDougal
Tim Matheson
as Vance Wilder Sr.
Daniel Cosgrove
as Richard "Dick" Bagg
Tom Everett Scott
as Elliot Grebb (uncredited)

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

Plot summary

Tagline: No party gets started until it gets wilder.
Tagline (alt): Don't graduate. Celebrate.

Van Wilder is an outgoing, friendly, and highly popular student who has been at Coolidge College for seven years. For the past three years he has tried not to graduate, instead spending his time organizing parties and fundraisers, doing charity work, and posing for figure drawing classes. But after seven years with no return, Van Wilder'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 tasked 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 Wilder 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 he takes personal offence at Wilder's attempts to steal his girlfriend, leading to a brutal rivalry between Bagg and Wilder.

Trivia

Tim Matheson
, star of National Lampoon's original college classic Animal House, plays Van's father.
Actors Erik Estrada
(CHiPs), Edie McClurg
(Ferris Bueller's Day Off
) and Dr. Joyce Brothers all have cameos.
NBA players Darius Miles, Michael Olowokandi and Quentin Richardson 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 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, with Taj (Kal Penn
) as the lead, is expected to be released in 2006. It is currently titled Van Wilder 2: Rise of the Taj
, although it won't feature Van Wilder.
As featured on The Late Show with David Letterman, there is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater named Johnny Lechner who has been attending college for 12 consecutive years.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for National Lampoon's Van Wilder ]

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