Also this issue:

Space Cowboys
Y Tu Mamá También is a road movie that truly explores.
—Cindy Fuchs

screenpicks
—Sam Adams

Big Trouble
—Ryan Godfrey

High Crimes
—Cindy Fuchs

Repertory Film

April 4-10, 2002

movie shorts

National Lampoon's VanWilder

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VAN WILDER

Those togas in the ads (but not in the movie) are NatLamp’s obvious attempt to recapture Animal House’s lightning in a bottle, but don’t be fooled: Ryan Reynolds (who’s one guy, one girl and one pizza place short) is as much John Belushi as he is Scruffy the Cat. Mugging ceaselessly at the camera as if eyebrows were going out of style, Reynolds, as seventh-year senior Van Wilder, shows such a gap between actual and imagined charisma that you almost want to like the guy. No wait, you don’t. Tara Reid, who has, to her credit, turned her absolute lack of personality into a selling point, is laughably cast as an intrepid campus news reporter (you know, those people who know how to string complete sentences together), and, well, I can’t go on. This is a movie which thinks it’s still a novel joke to come up with funny three-letter combinations for fictional frat houses (in this case, DIK). Can there be anything else to say? --Sam Adams (UA Riverview)

—Sam Adams

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