ans of National Lampoon's Van Wilder will no doubt remember Taj Mahal Badalandabad as the trusty, horny sidekick to the lead character that was Ryan Reynolds' party animal-on-campus. Four years later, and after earning a modest $21-million at the box office but rising to an impressive DVD cult status, the Van Wilder franchise is back. 

  This time, however, Reynolds is absent after stepping aside to the let the red-hot Kal Penn take the reins in National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj. It's one of the biggest roles yet for the emerging Penn, 29, who was born in New Jersey of Gujarati Indian heritage and who went on to crack up audiences as Kumar in the 2004 hit Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. 

  Now firmly settled in Los Angeles, Penn also starred in this summer's Superman Returns, and is slated to star in next year's Epic Movie -- a lampoon of some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters, courtesy of those zany Scary Movie writers. In The Rise of Taj, Penn is back for more laughs as the irrepressible Indian exchange student forever in search of a good woman and a good time, or both simultaneously. 

  The saga continues with Taj branching out on his own, after learning all he can from his mentor, Van Wilder. Always a serious student, Taj flies across  
actors
Kal Penn
Lauren Cohan
Glen Barry

director
Mort Nathan

location
England
Bucharest, Romania
outtake
Penn will also star in a sequel to Harold and Kumar in which the pair go to Amsterdam.

the pond to attend the prestigious -- and fictional -- Camford University. Once there, he shacks up with a rag-tag bunch of not-so-popular Brit students who quickly become his pupils in the fine art of having a good time, all the time.

  The group opens an American-style frat house, with the wild parties quickly improving their reputation on campus, much to the disapproval of the stuffy, nose-in-the-air, stiff-upper-lip crowd. "Just because you're all making a spectacle of yourselves doesn't mean you're not still invisible to the rest of us," one of the snobbish students sneers to Taj and his new friends.

  Both groups decide to compete for The Hastings Cup, the university's most sought after award, spawning an intense campus rivalry that simmers and boils like a kettle of English tea, as Taj and his pals learn to juggle the staid traditions of a British upper-crust education with a good ol' American-style partying.

-- Brett Clarkson