DVD Review: ‘Van Wilder: Freshman Year’

Occasionally the life of a movie critic is a rough one. Sure we get ot see all the amazing new movies early and talk about them before they come out, but then once in a while we throw ourselves infront of a bullet and see a movie like “Van Wilder: Freshman Year” in order to save you from the pain. Here’s me showing you all the mortal wounds this steaming pile left me with.

When you make a prequel you have a few options about how you can go about doing it. You can hire the same actor and hope they’re still in massively good shape like Hugh Jackman was for Wolverine, you can reinvent the character like they did with Star Trek and Chris Pine, you can go way back in time and make it a story about the same characters as kids, or you can do what this film did and hire an actor that looks nothing like the original actor to do a bad impersonation of the actor that created the role. Not only does Jonathan Bennett‘s Van Wilder not look anything like Ryan Reynolds, but he’s also older than Ryan Reynolds was when he created the role. That may not seem like a big deal, but the character is supposed to be seven years younger than he was in the original film, and Jonathan Bennett is almost 30. Thirty playing eighteen never goes over well.

The plot of the film, if you want to stretch and say there is one, is that Van Wilder isn’t the super popular party maniac we know him as in the first film because the dean of the school won’t allow any of the awesome things we expect in a rated R college movie. Dean Rearden is a stuck up jerk who’s mad at Van Wilder’s father because he was a party animal when he went to that school. Now Rearden is on a rampage to make Van Wilder’s life a living hell.

Yes it’s a boring terrible plot, but fear not! All of the recylced jokes from the first movie are BACK! That’s right Van Widler make’s friends with a stoner named Farely Marley, and a Chinese exchange student who’s desperate to get laid. And yes the exchange student has an obscene name! It’s Yu Dum Fok! ISN’T THAT CLEVER!? Why he wasn’t named Sum Yung Gy is beyond me.

Of course there’s a girl in the film, and like in all college films she’s dating the douche bag that hates the hero. In this case the douche bag and his friend are two cadets in the dean’s ROTC program. Guess what… they have clever names too! Corporals Benedict and Arnold. The girl this time around is Kaitlyn Hayes played by the champion of wooden performances Kristin Cavallari.

“Freshman Year” accomplishes what it sets out to do from the very start. It’s goal is to tell only the most juvinile of jokes while showing as much nudity as they can before being called pornography. It’s a relic in the world of R rated comedies. This style of film hasn’t been popular since American Pie was still on the big screen. It’s not funny, original, and goes against the continuity of the first film.

The biggest reason to not watch this film is that it simply doesn’t matter. Does Van get the girl? WHO CARES!? Van was clearly single when the original film was made so whether he gets this girl or not, she won’t be in the picture for very long. He’s a party animal and whatever lesson he learns in this movie about being a nice guy was completely lost somewhere along the way. Same goes for all of his new best friends. Where were they in the original film? There’s no reason his room mate from the original film couldn’t have been in this one, but instead they replace him and everyone else with poor copies, which is saying alot since the first movie isn’t exactly a beloved piece of work.

Overall Rating: 1 out of 5