Are you ready, Van Wilder fans? Taj is back on his quest for the "pink taco stand" and has turned another group of down-low losers into the coolest chaps on campus.

An early screening of National Lampoon's "Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj" at the Orpheum last night was almost as good as advertised, serving as a fairly humorous spin-off of the original flick, which came out in 1999.

While the first Van Wilder, starring Ryan Reynolds and Tara Reid, was a laugh-out-loud representation of the joys of college in America, "Rise of Taj" chronicles life after Coolidge College for Van's sidekick, Indian exchange student Taj Mahal Badalandabad.

Taj, played by Kal Penn (who viewers may recognize as Kumar from "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle"), has traveled to England in hopes of joining an elite fraternity at Camford University, but is turned away in a cruel joke played by the frat brothers. As a result, Taj becomes a teaching assistant and ultimately uses Van's old "think of the present, not of the future" mantra, pulling a group of lovable geeks together to form their own fraternity, Cock and Bulls. Taj then goes head to head with the fraternity that spurned him, Fox and Hounds, in the chase for Camford's prestigious Hastings Cup.

In the end, Taj gets his hands on the Cup — and the girl, of course — as the frat guys who humiliated Taj in the first place receive their just desserts (but not creme brulée desserts filled with dog semen, as in the first movie).

For those who long for the nonstop humor of the first Wilder movie, "Rise of Taj" makes sure to throw in some recycled jokes from the original. Taj is still in search of the "pink taco stand," drives a golf cart around Camford and authoritatively instructs his cohorts, upon dispensing some of his sage advice, to "write that down." Taj takes on each of these quirks from his former mentor Van as the sequel puts his character in a completely different role from the first movie, transforming him from nervous little servant to cool, confident ringleader.

As raunchy as the first movie was, the sequel goes even further on all counts. Among something like 84 different aphorisms for "female reproductive opening," the film incorporates a topless badminton game, a mid-flight bout of oral pleasure involving a bottle of hot sauce and a cabin bathroom, and another round of laughs due to a bulldog's abnormally large, uh, bulge in the back.

This movie certainly has all the makings of a silly college movie, and that's illustrated further by the lack of any real drama or emotion. When Taj is expelled for something he didn't do, there's no real build-up to Taj's return to the top. Instead of really knocking out Taj and making the audience feel as if there's no way luck can save him, Taj just returns to competition for the Hastings Cup when an anticlimactic piece of evidence clears him of any wrongdoings.

What's more, the final fencing-match showdown isn't very captivating, either. It seems the moviemakers didn't care to really make the moviegoer root for Taj, and it leaves viewers a little disappointed with the outcome.

But that's to be expected from a spin-off of a wacky, nutty movie like the old Van Wilder. Penn is hilarious with his witty remarks, the members of Cock and Bulls are easily relatable, bringing their own humorous touch to the film. And hey, guys in the audience can't go wrong with all the lovely young English girls graphically seducing the entire male population of Camford University.

The bottom line is that "Rise of Taj" may not rank up there with the funniest movies of all time, and it pales in comparison to the first Van Wilder. But to those who attended the free screening Thursday night, it was more than worth the price of admission, and will be a "jolly old time" for all who see the movie.