"Don't be a fool - stay at school" - that's the core philosophy of perpetual student Van Wilder (Reynolds).

The trouble is that, after consistently failing to graduate from Coolidge College, Van's dad (Matheson) is onto him and has decided to cut off his tuition fees.

Without any cash there'll be no more organising wild parties, counselling shy freshmen, seducing Valley Girl co-eds... and attending the odd lecture.

So Van has a plan. He'll concentrate on what he does best - social secretary to the students - but plucky student reporter Gwen Pearson (Reid) is onto him.

That's basically the plot. However, what lifts this above the normal, excruciating gross-out fare is the standard of the writing, which is really better than it ought to be.

Reynolds is terrific. Combining the delivery of an exaggeratedly honourable elder brother with a lascivious charmer, he gets most of the good lines - and he doesn't waste them.

Eyeing one of his conquests, Reid asks, "What was that girl? A freshman?" to which Reynolds blithely replies, "She reads at a sophomore level."

Reid - normally cast as beach-bound eye candy - gets the serious role (don't titter) and, to be honest, she's never going to give Judi Dench sleepless nights.

So what's wrong with it? Well, the film-makers appear reluctant to acknowledge quite how good the raw material they're working with is.

So a couple of gross-out setpieces (you'll never look at a cream bun quite the same way again) are clumsily shoehorned into the action, ruining the flow.

The bad taste option unbalances the movie which, for the first hour at least, was pretty much one of the funniest things this particular genre had thrown up in a long time.

Made by the National Lampoon people (but the title was dropped from the UK release), this is a pleasing flashback to the heady days of Animal House. As Van would say: "Write that down."

Tim Evans