The fall of a franchise

Here's a thought: How do you make a Van Wilder movie without Van Wilder? The answer, after watching the film, (which is as transparent as the bras the bimbettes in the movie pirouette around in) -- you do NOT.

When Van Wilder released in 2002, it inspired a genre of American campus capers. The film mirrored (albeit an exaggerated reality) the trials and tribulations of a generation experimenting with the American Greek system, drinks, drugs, sex and some more drinks and even more sex. Van Wilder starred Ryan Reynolds in the title role along with Tara Reid.

The film didn't aim to be intellectual or classy and thrived upon the charismatic super-smug Ryan Reynolds, playing the brash seventh-year senior afraid to graduate into the real world, almost like a sleazy nod to Aamir Khan's DJ in Rang De Basanti.

Van Wilder also featured Kal Penn as Taj Badalandabad. Taj, was Van Wilder's personal assistant, who boasted of incubating the repressed Indian male's libido that was just waiting to unleash its 'energies' upon anything that can remotely move.

But in the sequel, Kal is absolutely appalling. The story involves Taj Mahal Badalandabad leaving Coolidge College behind for the halls of Camford University in England, where he looks to continue his education, win the hottest girl and teach a bunch of losers to beat the Queen's men at their own game.

Sadly, the guy doesn't know if he is coming or going. The script-less Rise Of Taj turns Kal into a mentally challenged superficial buffoon spouting lines of agonisingly stupid clichés. He talks endlessly, giving speech after speech and proclaims himself king of the campus though Taj never actually gets around to doing anything that might prove it.

If at any point in these speeches there was intended humour, I completely missed it. Taj, with his increasingly pseudo-American trying to understand Indian sensibilities ultimately comes across as a preachy little twerp who wouldn't know cool if it came up and bit him on his American Born Confused Desi a**.

There are no jokes, there are no laughs, even the toilet humour stinks and there's barely even a plot. The movie doesn't just rehash every overused, college comedy cliché it takes them and demotes the nonsense to new levels of absurdity.

For instance there's the Bombay sauce(y) scene that introduces Taj as a member of the mile high club -- I have seen nothing less cinematic.

The movie is a technical nightmare too. It's full of obvious and confusing continuity errors, editing incompetence and a drunken stedicam operator that was probably recruited on campus even before his first day in film-school. The Rise Of Taj is so bad; it's not even worth reacting to.

Rediff Rating: