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August 18, 2006
Accepted
(out of four)
When applying for college, no one wants the skinny envelope, the one that contains a single sheet of paper with the words, "We regret to inform you..." You want the fat package, stuffed with a letter that begins, "Congratulations," and lots of colorful pictures of your bright college future.
Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) doesn't have a bright college future. He got the skinny letter — eight of them to be exact. Rejected from every university he applied to, Bartleby hatches a plan: Why not invent his own school, accept himself and spend his dad's tuition money however he wants? Ferris Bueller took a day off; Bartleby Gaines is about to coast through his next four years!
As slacker stories go, Accepted features the genre's most ambitious plot, then delivers less than the countless Animal House- and Old School-style comedies that inspired it. Actually, it's not even fair to call Accepted a slacker story, since Bartleby must work harder than his traditional college friends to pull off his con.
The plan depends on renting an abandoned psychiatric hospital and passing it off as South Harmon Institute of Technology. The humor, meanwhile, depends on how many creative jokes the three screenwriters could wring from the school's unfortunate initials. There's the school color (brown), the school paper (The Rag), the school mascot (a sandwich) and so on. If you thought Meet the Parents pushed the Fockers jokes a bit far, you ain't seen nothing yet.
When it's not making poopie puns, Accepted has its share of self-important college rituals to skewer, taking halfhearted shots at everything from frat-house hazing to scholastic requirements. "You're telling me there are no tests or essays or required reading or any of that nonsense?" marvels Bartleby's vanilla-boring love interest (Blake Lively). That's right, South Harmon asks students what they want to study, resulting in such useful self-guided courses as Slacking, Doing Nothing, Daydreaming, Hitting on Strippers and Advanced Skepticism.
But anarchy can reign only so long before the movie itself must conform to storytelling expectations, however lame. There's some nonsense about the snooty neighboring school taking South Harmon to court, followed by a woefully misconceived hearing in which Bartleby defends his scam (remember, at $10,000 a year in tuition, he's raking in millions on this enterprise).
With virtually no other redeeming factors, Accepted runs solely on Bartleby's charm, a credit to actor Long, an affable comic talent who suggests a cross between a young John Cusack and a less-stiff Keanu Reeves. The kid deserves his own show, even if this shot at carrying a movie fails miserably.
[as featured in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram]
Posted by Peter Debruge on