BY DANIEL BAIG | Pity me.

In less than a one week period at the end of March I had to sit through three different (yet distressingly similar) "raunchy sexual hijinks / gross-out humor"-type films. Two of them I saw in the same 24 hour period. And only three weeks earlier I had had to see 40 Days and 40 Nights, which could also accurately be described with the above phrase.

Three of these movies included sight gags revolving around an erect penis. All four featured elaborate jokes about semen; in three of them the joke specifically concerned semen stains. Two of the films have scenes fairly explicitly depicting a man receiving oral sex from a woman. Three of them showcase gratuitous female nudity.

But perhaps I'm being unfair in emphasizing these movies' similarities. I should try to focus on the differences instead:

For instance, while both The Sweetest Thing (opening next week) and Sorority Boys had cum-stains-on-a-dress jokes, 40 Days had a cum-stain-on-a-bed joke.

And as far as the two college set comedies go, while Sorority Boys had dildo jokes, National Lampoon's Van Wilder has penis pump jokes.

While a significant part of Sorority Boys' plot was about a virgin college boy and his comically pathetic attempts to go to bed with a woman, which include falling off the bed onto the floor, in Van Wilder, the significant part of the plot about the clueless virgin college boy and his comically pathetic attempts to go to bed with a woman, which include falling off the bed onto the floor, is different because its clueless virgin college boy has a goofy Indian accent!!

Sorority Boys' storyline involved a sorority whose members weren't getting laid because of their physical unattractiveness, including excess facial hair, and geekiness, but who actually finally score some action at a swinging party brought about and organized by the movie's three male buddy protagonists; Van Wilder's storyline, on the other hand, involves a fraternity whose members weren't getting laid because of their physical unattractiveness, including excess facial hair, and geekiness, but who actually finally score some action at a swinging party brought about and organized by the movie's three male buddy protagonists.

In Sorority Boys, the obnoxious, male chauvinist fraternity's letters abbreviate to KOK (heh heh). And so there are a lot of "jokes" involving male characters saying things like, "Im proud to be a KOK," and hanger-on-ish girls saying, "I love KOK!"

In Van Wilder it's totally different. Its obnoxious, male chauvinist fraternity's letters abbreviate to DIK (heh heh). And so there are a lot of "jokes" involving male characters saying things like, "I'm proud to be a DIK," and hanger-on-ish girls saying, "I love DIK!"

And the actor who's a veteran of National Lampoon's Animal House making a cameo appearance in Sorority Boys is not the same actor who's a veteran of National Lampoon's Animal House making a cameo appearance in National Lampoon's Van Wilder! Two different guys!

Just as the guy who was in Revenge of the Nerds who makes a cameo appearance in Van Wilder is not the same Revenge of the Nerds cast member who makes a cameo appearance in Sorority Boys! Again, two totally different guys!

Yes, both movies have as their first scene set in the jerk frat house a bunch of naked new pledges tied up (we get to see their bare butts), about to be hazed by the jerk head of the frat, a pompous windbag with a really bad haircut. But in Sorority Boys it's a bad pompadour, and in Van Wilder it's a bad Caesar cut!

And for all these differences, I am indeed grateful. After all, variety is the spice of life!

Okay, now you may be objecting, "Hey, critic guy, it's not the movies' fault that you saw them all in the same month, and that by the time you got to Van Wilder [the fourth one of the group I saw, though it's coming out a week before The Sweetest Thing] you were just exhausted by the whole genre!"

Well . . .

that's true . . . kind of. Yeah, it's not the movies themselves that are to blame. On the other hand, it is the movie studios' fault. And though I saw all four movies because I'm a critic, the studios are going after the same demographic with each one, and in their perfect world, that avid movie-going teenager would have seen each one of them  and he or she would have seen them all in the space of one month, just like I did, because they were released in the same month period! (Well, okay, actually, 40 Days was more than a month before The Sweetest Thing.)

And it's especially not my fault that Artisan, the studio releasing Van Wilder, saw fit to release their college campus-set sexual hijinks / gross-out humor movie two weeks after Sorority Boys, a college campus-set sexual hijinks / gross-out humor movie!

That decision completely mystifies and baffles me. As it happens, Sorority Boys tanked at the box office. But what if it had been a hit? (As had been expected, to the extent that the sequel had already been greenlit!)

Did they expect that kids would say, "Hey, that college romp was great! Let's go see another one!"

I mean, yeah, Deep Impact and Armageddon came out the same year, but they spaced them apart by a few months!

And while to be sure, as far as Van Wilder's filmmakers go, the proximity to these other movies is a coincidence they had nothing to do with, their movie's marked similarities to previous hit movies is absolutely not a coincidence, and not in any way unfair of me to comment on.

Especially since, in the case of Animal House, they're doing their absolute best to draw the comparisons themselves!

To start with, of course, there's the "National Lampoon's" in the title. Then there's the poster, depicting titular hero Van Wilder, played by Ryan Reynolds, in a toga. And generally speaking, if you know anything about Animal House, the first thing you think about when you hear that title is guys (John Belushi specifically) in togas!

But, hey, guess what?

There are no scenes in Van Wilder in which Van Wilder appears in a toga.

Then there's the casting of Tim Matheson in the small role of Van's father. Matheson was the smooth operator / ladies man / popular leader character in Animal House. Van, in Van Wilder, is a smooth operator / ladies man / popular leader character. In Animal House, Matheson's character has sex with the much older wife of the dean. In Van Wilder, Van has sex with the much older female dean. (Although he doesn't want to, while in Animal House the guy did; also, the woman in question in Van Wilder is much, much older.)

And would it be unfair of me to accuse Van Wilder of shamelessly ripping American Pie off?

Well, again, maybe I'm being too harsh with that accusation. Because, while American Pie featured a guy having sex with pastry, and the unwitting consumption by a guy of someone else's semen, Van Wilder actually features the unwitting consumption by guys of something else's semen in pastry!! An inspired combination and improvement on the original, no?

And while American Pie has a big gag sequence about a guy being slipped massive amounts of a super-strong laxative powder in his drink, causing, while he's at school, his nether regions to produce a cacophony of hideous farting (and worse) noises, before he succumbs to an attack of explosive diarrhea in a public toilet, causing him intense embarrassment, Van Wilder's big gag sequence about a guy being slipped massive amounts of a super-strong laxative powder in his drink, causing, while he's at school, his nether regions to produce a cacophony of hideous farting (and worse) noises, before he succumbs to an attack of explosive diarrhea in public, causing him intense embarrassment goes the earlier movie one better by having the unfortunate victim of the "prank" not be able to make it to the restroom; instead, he's forced to publicly void his bowels in a waste basket, in someone's office, right in front of horrified onlookers (and onsmellers).

While American Pie 2 featured a man unwittingly putting his lips on an object which had previously been inserted inside of a very private part of another guy, Van Wilder features a man unwittingly putting his lips on an object into which had previously been inserted a very private part of another guy.

Ah, but there's one area in which Van Wilder actually is completely different from the American Pie movies: this new movie utterly lacks believable characters. They're all paper-thin sketches instead.

Ryan Reynolds as Van is quite pleasantly amusing at times, but it's very much a "performance." It's shtick; it's an act. The first couple of times he makes a double entendre (or hears something said which could be interpreted as a double entendre) and does this thing where he flips his eyes sideways for a moment with a smidgen of a reflective smirk before whipping them back to resume the conversation, as if he'd just been called away briefly to another astral plane, is cute. By the eighth time he does it you want to take up a collection in the theater to buy him a new trick.

Actually, he does have one additional trick  at times he actually gives the camera a little knowing winking smile.

When he's forced to occasionally deliver lines meant to actually reveal Van's true inner conflict (he's scared to leave college for the real world, which is why he's still a student after seven years), Reynolds doesn't even bother trying to act, in the sense of trying to make you believe in the lines or the situation for even a second. Instead, it's more like a Tom Green delivery, or a Chevy Chase one.

Tara Reid, on the other hand, actually apparently did feel compelled to act, which she demonstrates by standing very still and staring intently when she's interacting with other characters. And her effort pays off  she's far less unbelievable as a real person than Reynolds is.

Which still doesn't mean she's remotely believable as a real person. But it's not really her fault. As they're written, these characters have zero believability from the outset.

For example, Reid's character is mean to be a very bright young woman. She's also clearly very attractive. Yet her boyfriend is a real jerk. Absolute. Total. Unmitigated. Jerk.

Which is dumb. Even in a broad comedy, you have to at least have one motivation for the heroine to be dating the villain, even if the plot will of course call for her to eventually leave him for the hero. Otherwise she's just an idiot, which she's not supposed to be.

You know, like if they had made him really good looking or something, you could say, well, she was blinded by his looks. Or it could be that she felt sorry for him for some reason (like Selma Blair's character in Storytelling did for her boyfriend). Or maybe he's two-faced, and when he's around her he actually isn't a jerk.

But no. This guy (played by Daniel Cosgrove, looking a lot closer to 30 than to undergrad years) is just an unattractive jerk, all the time. And his jerkiness isn't even cleverly written.

The big joke is that he's a pre-med student, so whenever he speaks he uses medical "metaphors." These are so unfunny they fall into the dread category of anti-humor: when you hear them you feel like laughs you've laughed earlier in your life have been taken away from you.

Oh, and he's president of the bad fraternity. The DIK house, remember? Oh, and hey, get this  they've also named his character Dick! So just in case the "jokes" about him "being a DIK" weren't enough, Van also gets to call him "Dick [dick, get it?]" to his face, or say things in front of him to Tara like, "This is the pre-med Dick [dick, get it?] you're dating?"

Bet you've never seen that gag before in a movie, huh? I'm sorry, what was that? Ghostbusters? Sorry, never heard of it.

The lazy, sloppy writing extends to the machinations of the meager "plot." For example:

Van Wilder has been a student at the college for seven years. He is a living legend there. Everybody on campus knows and loves him; they worshipfully call out his name to him as he drives by in the golf cart he, and he alone, is allowed to drive all over the place in. He hosts seemingly every campus event. He inspires the basketball team to win (by telling them that if they win, he'll throw them a party where hot girls are going to show up; hearing this makes them play well all of a sudden; it's amazing, isn't it, that nobody has ever come up with this motivator before), and everybody recognizes him as a hero for doing it. He has auditions! for students to serve as his personal assistant!

And yet when Tara's character, who seems to be a senior (i.e. she's been at the school for at least three years herself), is assigned by her editor at the campus paper where she's a reporter to do a story on Van  she's never heard of him! She has no idea who he is! In other words, the movie has no internal consistency! It doesn't even follow the rules of its own world.

And she proves what a bright reporter she is  and why actually she's apparently their star reporter  by walking into the student administration office and asking to be shown Van's private records. And then she's shocked, and pouts, when she's rebuffed! Has she really never heard of privacy laws??

Then, at the end of the movie, she publishes a big, great article about Van which saves the day for him, sort of (more on that shortly). We get a montage of people all over campus reading this story with huge admiration, like it's a new book of the bible she's penned or something for the campus rag. Fine. Except  in the series of folks we see reading her article in the paper, engrossed in it, is  her editor!! Which . . . doesn't make any sense . . . As her editor, he had to read it before it got printed!

And then, the whole plot leads to, get this, listen carefully because it's so novel it'll blow you away  a big courtroom scene where even though he's clearly guilty all his friends whom he's helped over the years testify as to what a great guy he is (plus there's her newspaper article), and then he makes a big emotional speech, and falls on their mercy, and they're won over by his honesty and sincerity!

What's that you're saying? Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo? Big Daddy? Five hundred other movies? Sorry. Not ringing any bells.

Oh, wait. I have to mention one more thing. Van's personal assistant is a student from India. He has this hideous-to-listen-to "Indian" accent, which just made me feel embarrassed for the Indian-American actor (who in real life talks just like you or me) playing him. The character's name? Taj Mahal Badalandabad. Yes. Taj Mahal. The name of the Indian student is Taj Mahal.

After having offered that final bit of proof of the quality of this movie's writing (by Brent Goldberg and David T. Wagner), I really don't know what else I could possibly say.

Except perhaps that it would be nice to see an American movie, with college as its setting, which wasn't shot at UCLA for a change. Oh well, maybe next time.