Slobs vs. Snobs, but in Merry Old England

Although not a massive hit when it was released in 2002, National Lampoon's Van Wilder did respectable business in the Box Office ($38 Mil against a $5 Mil budget) which was then followed by a steady stream of video rentals and sales on the DVD market. That was enough to get production companies Myriad Pictures and Tapestry Films to consider green-lighting a sequel. The only issue was that star Ryan Reynolds was on his way up, starring in bigger and larger films since Van Wilder, and he didn't want to come back for a four-years-late sequel (especially when, arguably, everything about his character's story had been tied up in the first film).

However, a second avenue for a sequel was open to the producers: take one of the side characters from the first film and give them their own spin-off (a la the Bruce Almighty / Evan Almighty route). The most obvious star for this proposed second film would be Kal Penn, who played Taj Mahal Badalandabad in the first film. Transplanting him to a new location and giving him his own college-based lead story would allow the film to move forward without necessarily having to spend a lot of time explaining why Van Wilder was played by a new (less interesting) character (a route the companies eventually went with anyone for the hideously terrible prequel, Van Wilder: Freshman Year).

In fairness to the producers, this solution isn't as outwardly bad as it first sounds. Kal Penn was a breakout supporting player in the first Van Wilder, and after that film he'd gone on to star in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, which became it's own little hit. Clearly Penn could carry a film like this. And he does, easily settling into a lead role clearly molded after Van Wilder himself. Kal Penn is the single greatest part of a film that, otherwise, really didn't need to exist.

In the film, Taj (Penn) heads to Camford University in England to get his masters. He plans to join the illustrious Fox and Hounds, a Fraternal Guild on campus that his father supposedly was a part of. However, upon arrival, the members of the guild, led by lordly douche Pip (Daniel Percival), inform Taj that the acceptance letter he received was an error and he wasn't actually accepted into the guild. Instead, he's been set over at the Barn, a shitty little house with a few students -- Glen Barry as Seamus, Anthony Cozens as Gethin, Holly Davidson as Sadie, and Tom Davey as Percy -- who will also have Taj as their house master and academic advisor.

Seeing the students under his care, and hearing their stories about coming to Camford and also getting acceptance letters to the Fox and the Hounds before getting rejected, Taj realizes he has to take a stand. He forms, from his group at the Barn, the Cock and Bulls society, and then enter into the campus cup for a chance at becoming the biggest group at the school (an honor the Fox and Hounds have had for decades). Pip and his cronies can't let this stand, and this sets up a rivalry between the two factions. And all along, Taj develops the hots for Charlotte (Lauren Cohan), Pip's girlfriend who seems to really like Taj, if she could just realize it herself. The war of the classes has begun, and everyone is rooting for the slobs at the Barn to take it all.

While The Rise of Taj has a few strengths, ambition is not one of them. This film is basically a carbon copy of the plot and structure of the first Van Wilder. If you swap Taj for Van, Charlotte for Gwen, Pip for Richard, and the group of students at the Barn for Taj himself in the first film, you have all of the characters and story elements from that movie. The biggest innovations this film has were to promote Taj and give him a story in England, and that's not really very much at all when you think about it.

As I said, Penn is actually pretty likable in this film and he does a good job of making his character, Taj, into a solid Van Wilder clone. Having trained under Van, having Taj act a lot like him makes a certain amount of sense. And the other actors in the film are pretty solid again, from the Barn kids to Percival as Pip. None of the acting is outright bad, nothing glaring or terrible. Hell, Cohen is a much better female lead to play off of Penn than Tara Reid was for Ryan Reynolds. The movie got decent actors for its little film and did what it could with them.

The big issue is that the movie doesn't really have any creativity to it. It's story is, in essence, the structure of Van Wilder's slobs vs. snobs conflict mashed up against the campus games of Revenge of the Nerds (which, itself, had its own slobs vs. snobs conflict). Watching the film is watching a clone of the first movie, just with a different lead star. Hell, the movie follows all the beats well enough that, had Ryan Reynolds come back so he could play Van Wilder in this story, nothing would have seemed different. Only minor massaging would have had to be done to make that work, showing how little effort was put in to differentiate Taj from Van in this role.

It's weird, too, when you think about it because an Indian character dropped into England, dealing with the snobbish class warfare of a lordly douche actually should lead to a pretty compelling storyline. It doesn't take more than a passing knowledge of the political situation between England and India to know that a really good, biting storyline could have been written for these characters. While Taj makes one or two tiny references to the history of Indiana, the film shies away from anything biting or political. The satire of the situation could have been really strong, dark and hilarious but the film doesn't buy into it. It's weird, because the setup is there, but somewhere along the way the potential of that setup was lost.

What we're left with, then, in a film that's crude and crass, like Van Wilder, but without as many laughs. Part of the problem is the script, which goes for easy lay-ups and simple jokes. There isn't a lot of humor to really be had in the film, and while what jokes do exist land, they are few and far between. This might also be the case for Van Wilder but Ryan Reynolds could be relied on to do a face or a reaction shot or a weird line reading and find humor where none existed. Penn is not that kind of comedian. I like him here, and I think he's good with a solid script, but he's not the same kind of actor as Reynolds. To make this film work the script needed to be tighter and funnier.

There are little joys to be found here and there in Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj. The film isn't a complete and utter wreck (look no further than Freshman Year). It's just that the first film had the right chemistry between lead actor and story that it's hard to duplicate it. Penn is game but the film around him was not, and it leads to a much flatter, and less interesting, second film.