Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj Movie Review

If I was the studio that produced Revenge of the Nerds, I'd be on the phone to a lawyer to file a plagiarism/copyright violation suit against the studio that produced Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj, which is as close to a scene-by-scene ripoff as you could possibly imagine.

Check it out: Van Wilder 2 (which does not feature the original film's title character in any way whatsoever, nor does it even take place in the same country) has Taj (Kal Penn), a minor character from the original, of to a British university to continue his education. Here he tries to join the ritzy fraternity, only to be quickly turned away. At his new home, he joins with the campus losers to start their own frat house. The bulk of the film comprises a series of contests on campus with some vague prize going to the winning fraternity. Along the way, Taj steals the girlfriend of his posh rival (Daniel Percival). Naturally, no opportunity to present a naked bosom is passed by.

While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, that doesn't make Van Wilder 2 any good. It's not good at all, really, filled with gross-out humor (the canine ejaculate gag continues from the first film), and absurd action that revolves around a series of fencing competitions. Van Wilder 2 is almost never humorous aside from the occasional gag that elicits a chuckle (Holly Davidson's cockney coed is often amusing), preferring instead to dwell in deep direct-to-DVD juvenility.

What more could I complain about? That Penn does perhaps the worst fake Indian accent I've ever heard, despite being of actual Indian heritage. (He has no trace of an accent in real life; here he makes The Simpsons' Apu sound like Gandhi.) And seriously, I don't even know what to say about a supposedly "unrated" DVD that blurs out nipples. How's that work?

The DVD includes deleted scenes, a gag reel, and a couple of featurettes.

Bad-minton.