Accepted review

2006.09.19 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole

At last, a movie that doesn't have a colon in its name. That's not all you can say for Accepted, but it's something. Justin Long stars as a high school slacker who has rather improbably managed to botch his college entrance applications and decides to get off his ass and make something of himself. Or, more accurately, make something for himself in the form of a fake university (well, technical institute).

Now, it's never really clear how his character thinks he can pull off the ruse. He only really has to fool his parents, but for how long? Four years? Does he plan to apply to schools more seriously later and "transfer" after one semester? That might actually work, but we don't know, since the plan is never articulated. What is articulated is how dumb his friends are to actually help him fake not only a school website (piece of cake, frankly) but also a school so his parents can drop him off. Lease an abandoned mental hospital and make it presentable? Count me in!

It's not a bad premise and not completely outrageous (for a movie). Long's character Bartleby has help from Jonah Hill as his much dumpier (and much better actor) friend Sherman; Maria Thayer as his over-achieving friend Rory; Columbus Short as his token black friend Hands; and Adam Herschman as his odd friend Glen, who apparently suffered severe head trauma sometime earlier in life.

Sherman actually has his act together enough to get into his school of choice: Harmon University, where—as chance would have it—Bartleby's ideal woman Monica (Blake Lively of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) goes. This gives Bartleby an excuse to run into her as often as the screenplay requires. It's not explained why Bartleby is not attracted to Rory, the vivacious redhead over-achiever who is devastated to have been rejected by her Ivy League school of choice (Harvard, Yale, Smashmouth... I forget). But no matter; the real explanation is: that's not how screenplays are written.

Anyway, together with a little help from crazy Uncle Ben (crazy Lewis Black), who pretends to be the dean of the school in front of parents, they create the fake school and suddenly find themselves deluged with students who got accepted by Sherman's fake website, which for some reason was designed to send an acceptance letter to anyone who applied. Bartleby has something of an awakening and immediately goes from under-achiever to school administrator (hundreds of kids are handing over $10,000 tuition checks). Long can't quite pull off this transformation the way, say, Bill Murray would have thirty years ago (or twenty-five years ago... or twenty years ago), but he does a passable job.

The inevitable rivalry with nearby Harmon University arises extremely artificially (they want to buy the land to build a grand, gated approach). Bartleby's school is called "South Harmon Institute of Technology," abbreviated "SHIT," which writer/producer Mark Perez is apparently extremely proud of, because the characters say it about hundred times. In fact, the SHIT pun is probably the way the whole project got started; you can almost smell the pot and beer at the Herbie Fully Loaded wrap party where he came up with it. Perez got Adam Cooper and Bill Collage—the geniuses behind the Olsen twins' New York Minute—to flesh out the story, and the by-the-numbers approach shows ("AND THEN the hot girl sees his true value... AND THEN her boyfriend comes after him..."). It's directed (as if this sort of film needed a director) by first-timer Steve Pink, who has produced (as producer) some decent stuff but who lets the cast down a few times here with some clumsy choices.

But a film like this ultimately lives or dies on the strength of its jokes and lead actors, which in this case are weak and middling, respectively. There are some funny moments, mostly involving the very funny Jonah Hill as Sherman, who wants badly to be the fraternity type and whose rapid-fire babbling is the only time the movie ratchets up the pace enough to qualify for screwball status.

The absurdity of the ending is the biggest misfire. Since this is a zeroes-to-heroes story, it's essentially the moment Bill Murray made his trademark in Meatballs, Stripes, and so many others: the faintly ridiculous and self-conscious pep talk scene. In Accepted, Bartleby has to put up a convincing argument that his school is real or else face criminal fraud charges, so he explains that his students really learn something. But the filmmakers fail to deliver the goods. Have the students at South Harmon learned anything? We haven't seen it. But have the students at the real Harmon learned anything? Or are they just regurgitating pap that they will forget after the test? Bartleby doesn't make the comparison.

There is a real argument to be made against the traditional approach to higher education in which the primary thing that students learn in college is how to get thru college and the difference between students with different majors is virtually nil about three years after graduation. But this film isn't making any real argument. This film has trouble tying its shoes.

The filmmakers could have shown us how the students at South Harmon had actually learned skills they could apply to life. Maybe the stripper is funding her education by conducting aerobics classes. Or maybe the guys who built the skate park have a deal to build one for someone else. Or maybe Glen's cooking/chemistry skills have gained the interest of a snack manufacturer (or a defense contractor). Instead, we get a couple of lame testimonials and no indictment of the failure of the real Harmon to teach anything better.

Worse, Bartleby doesn't even make the obvious arguments. "Does your school have an athletic facility?" That could have been a great moment where Bartleby actually starts to realize that he's created something more than even he realized but instead he answers "no." But they actually do have a swimming pool and a skate park.

The character of crazy Uncle Ben is originally presented as a failed academic who has something of a revival with new students, so where is the payoff where his students prove that his cynicism has given them insight that any other professor couldn't? Or maybe someone on the review board gushes that some book he wrote years ago was a big influence?

Overall, there are some funny moments, and not too many jokes fall completely flat. It's not meaningful. It's certainly not Animal House or Stripes. It's more Revenge of the Nerds, only not so satisfying. Actually, that's not fair. It's at least as good as Revenge of the Nerds. Sorry, nerds.

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