![]() ![]() The film was directed by Mort Nathan, a hack writer whose only prior directing credit was - shudder - “Boat Trip.” Surely no person who endured that disaster can enter “The Rise of Taj” without trepidation. ![]() And wouldn’t you know it, Taj has a few tricks up his sleeve to cut those pompous Fox & Hound twits down to size!! Ha-ha! Wouldn’t you know it, Pipp’s girlfriend, Charlotte (Lauren Cohan), starts to fall for Taj, which makes the rivalry even more fierce. There’s a snooty fraternity called the Fox & Hounds, led by smarmy jerk Pipp Everett (Daniel Percival), and they intend to humiliate Taj’s house in the school-wide Hastings Cup competition. They are all desperately in need of help in becoming cool and confident, so it’s Van Wilder to the rescue! Er, Van Wilder, as learned and now repeated by Taj! There are just four students under his tutelage: Seamus (Glen Barry) the angry Irish kid, Gethin (Anthony Cozens) the nerd, Simon (Steven Rathman) the silent video-gamer, and Sadie (Holly Davidson) the cockney tramp. ![]() at a ramshackle residence hall known as the Barn. Taj is now a grad student at England’s Camford University, where he’s been made R.A. Van (played by Ryan Reynolds in the original) does not appear in the sequel, but his wisdom is often referred to. Taj (Kal Penn), an Indian-American student, was a protege of supreme slacker Van Wilder back at Coolidge College in the first “Van Wilder” film. But this one goes for long stretches without even TRYING to be funny, apparently content to let its half-baked characters wander around unsupervised while the audience waits impatiently for the next sperm joke. You can usually count on these things to at least be lively and madcap, if not actually entertaining. I was a little surprised, though, at how lackadaisical it is. Sure enough, “The Rise of Taj” is worthless, a completely desperate and mindless exercise in juvenility. (Imagine “Superman II: The Adventures of Jimmy Olsen” or “Toy Story II: The Wrath of Little Bo Peep.”) And “The Rise of Taj” hints that this sequel is focusing on a minor character from the first movie - another harbinger of doom. The fact that it’s a sequel to 2002’s “Van Wilder” is another gloomy sign, since sequels to bad movies are usually just as bad, if not worse. The “National Lampoon” part means it will be awful, as everything released under that label since “Christmas Vacation” (in 1989!) has totally blown. “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj” is a movie we can pretty much review based on its title alone. ![]() Sometimes you really can judge a book by its cover. ![]()
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