The one thing that can be said for ""Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj"" is that it answers the question: Could there be a Ryan Reynolds sequel so bad that even Reynolds himself could not stand to be in it? The star of such cinematic achievements as ""Just Friends"" and ""Big Monster on Campus"" declined to reprise his role in the sequel to his most famous and popular movie despite the fact that it still bears his character's name. In his stead is the usually reliable Kal Penn, but even he gets sucked down into the abyss that is this film.
Penn plays Taj, former second banana to Reynolds' Van, now studying abroad at a posh English university. Though he is supposed to be in the most elite house on campus, the group of snobs that occupy the house, led by Pipp Everett (Daniel Percival) force him to move to a deteriorating shack housing a group of misfits. He also comes across Charlotte (Lauren Cohan), his sexy boss, who also happens to be Pipp's girlfriend. Of course, Taj takes the misfits under his wing and competes against the snobs in a showdown for the title of the best house on campus.
Much of the humor of the film is predicated on the idea that people speaking in non-American accents saying dirty things is funny. In reality, what happens is that the characters all seem like vulgar rejects from a ""My Fair Lady"" cast. Even Penn, who broke ethnic barriers by not giving in to stereotypes in ""Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,"" gets lost and loses a lot of humor hiding behind his fake Indian accent.
Helming this cinematic voyage of the damned is director Mort Nathan, whose only other directing credit to date is the abysmal ""Boat Trip."" His camera direction is so poor that there are moments in the film when the audience fears the characters may hit their heads on the top of the frame. It is admirable, however, that he and screenwriter David Drew Gallagher found so many synonyms for female anatomy and, yet, so few were actually funny.
Mostly, the issue with ""Taj"" is that the film itself refuses to respect its viewers. There is good raunchy humor out there, but all of those films make its audience sympathize with the characters. ""Van Wilder"" even did this to a certain extent. But ""Taj"" is just so obsessed with such jokes as portraying Irish people as combative and having someone with an Indian accent utter the words ""pink taco"" that it forgets to do that.
""The Rise of Taj"" goes where so many others have gone before, but not nearly as well as any of them. Somewhere, Ryan Reynolds is watching this film and thanking his lucky stars that he got out of this one. Now if only he could get his character's name off the marquee as well...
