O Dono da Festa 2

Taj Mahal Badalandabad (played by Kal Penn) had a few funny moments in the movie (i.e. jokes regarding the former British aristocracy in India), but the movie almost nothing but sex jokes for the entire movie. This sort of humor included nearly a dozen different euphemisms for the female anatomy (I lost count), and countless jokes about how to "score" with the opposite gender. I laughed at the first few sex jokes, but by the end of the movie, I was really tired of hearing crude jokes.

If this sort of humor is appealing to you, then you'll enjoy this movie. Otherwise, don't bother seeing it. Overall, I felt "Harold and Kumar" was much more humorous. I'm a fan of Kal Penn's, but unfortunately, I cannot recommend this movie.

Brief Plot Synopsis (no spoilers below): Taj heads to Camford University (name taken from Cambridge and Oxford) in England to pursue his higher education and to follow in his fathers footsteps. He believes that he has been accepted to the prestigious fraternal guild "Fox and Hounds". However, upon arriving at the University, he is told by a "Fox and Hounds" member (nicknamed "Pip") that he was mistakenly sent this acceptance letter.

Taj is forced to become a teacher's assistant at the "Barn" residence, which contains a group of social outcasts. Pip and the other "Fox and Hounds" members treat Taj and his house mates very poorly. Determined to help the members of the Barn residence gain acceptance, Taj starts the "Cock and Bulls" fraternal guild. He hopes that the "Cock and Bulls" guild will win the Camford Cup, which is an annual academic, social, and athletic competition between fraternities. The bitterness between Taj and Pip only increases as the fraternities compete in several competitions to earn points towards the Camford Cup.

I cannot say anything more about the plot, or else I'll spoil it for you.

You know things aren't going well when the title character doesn't make an appearance in the 'sequel'. As much as I enjoyed Kal Penn in the first Van Wilder (and Harold and Kumar), he isn't given much to work with here.

The script is awful, just brutal. I think I laughed twice throughout the whole thing. I'm sure nobody is watching this type of movie for compelling characters and riveting plot, but when almost every single joke falls completely flat... every other blemish on the script becomes glaring. There are completely nonsensical subplots thrown about that reference secondary characters that you forgot were introduced in the first place, a silly competition that never makes any sense and an embarrassing turn by the bulldog that made his infamous scene from the first "Van Wilder" look like high art. If you sat a twelve year old in a room with a typewriter and told him to write "Revenge of the Nerds in England" he couldn't do much worse than what's given here. The worst part is that the movie gets consistently less funny as it goes on. The final 15 minutes or so is cringe inducing.

The direction isn't much better. The whole thing has a look of a made for cable TV movie you'd see on a kid's network. Not only is Kal Penn inconsistent with his accent from scene to scene, sometimes it's every other line. On a few occasions, I couldn't even make out the dialog. The actors clearly didn't give a clean read but it made through to the final cut anyways. I realize this was made on the cheap, but you can tell the folks behind the camera didn't put forth much effort. Either that or they didn't have the time. Regardless, it's not pretty to watch.

The only saving grace are the actors. Despite Kal Penn not bothering to hold his accent, everybody on screen appears to be having a good time. Even if everything else is awful, I can't hate a movie where it at least appears that the actors enjoyed their work. They all seemed determined to give their best despite what they all must have known was horrendous material. Kal and the female lead (Lauren Cohan) admirably build some chemistry with little help from their lines. Holly Davidson also steals a couple of scenes as the "cockney" member of the group.

While I didn't think this was a complete disaster, you'd be wise to avoid it.

It's no Ryan Reynolds of course, but it's just a teen fun movie. People are reviewing this like it's supposed to be something other than that. I didn't laugh out loud, but for me watching a comedy isn't always about rolling in the floor laughing. It's just feel good.

First let me start by saying I was a huge Van Wilder fan and enjoy all of Kal Penn's work, be it in Van Wilder, Harold & Kumar, and even American Desi. This film, however, was a disaster. The plot is unimaginative; Taj arrives in a British university and leads a misfit group of losers against a wealthy, socially elite house in an intra-fraternal competition. The object of Taj's affection unfortunately winds up being the girlfriend of his biggest antagonist, the head of the rival fraternity house (see the original Van Wilder for a blatantly similar romantic situation).

This just wasn't funny at all. I crack up pretty easily and laughed less than 5 or 6 times during an hour an a half. And even then, I was forcing it just because I felt like I forked down $10, and if I didn't even laugh once, I'd have been bamboozled of my money. The only redeeming scenes are those featuring Taj's parents, who are in the film for less than 10 minutes and managed to pull my rating from a 1 to a 2. Every other joke was corny, unfunny, and otherwise dull. The writing and directing were so uninspired that it was actually painful to watch this movie. The problem with this film was half conceptual too, since Taj was only funny in Van Wilder in the limited doses we got. Goofy Indian accents aren't enough to carry an hour and a half long poorly written train wreck, and that's what we saw here.

The thing that really bothered me was that I could feel Kal Penn's career dying before my eyes. I really don't know how anyone who read this script could agree to do it, especially him, because he was the only actor with a future in this movie. He had at least moderate buzz going for him after a string of decent performances, and then releases this nonsense. I can only hope that movie studios will forgive him, because it was difficult to watch this.

This movie was OK, but certainly no where near as good as a lot of college/party films. The character of Taj is pretty funny as well as his band of misfits in the Cock and Bulls frat. The geeky guy was probably the best. And Pip is certainly a slime ball. Taj comes to England to be a student teacher. He is also the house leader of a frat. He wants to win the Hastings Cup and really stick it to Pip. A lot of the film is Taj charming Pip's girl, Charlotte. There is also Sadie a member of Taj's frat, whom one could say has an ample bussom that is played for laughs.

Overall, there are a few laughs, but it has a long ways to go before I would call it a funny movie.

FINAL VERDICT: If you have to see every movie that is sort of like Animal House or Beerfest, then check this out. Otherwise, I would skip it.