Accepted

Justin Long
Adam Hirschman
Blake Lively
Lewis Black

Directed by: Steve Pink

Accepted follows in a long line of comedies about college students and their crazy antics all under the watchful eye of the establishment. When the college students cross the line, the establishment steps in to have them disbanded. They have to work together in unconventional ways to keep their group and way of life together. It is a pretty simple formula originally perfected by Animal House, and later tweaked and updated in films like PCU, How I Got Into College, and Old School. Normally, these films depend on topical, outrageous, and a little explicit comedy to differentiate themselves from their predecessors. Accepted falls flat because it doesn't use any of these "rules" to make it seem unique. It really comes across as a family friendly clone of these films.

Bartleby Gaines (Long) has to get into college. His friends are all accepted to local colleges and the pressure from his parents to continue his education is overwhelming. When he is declined by every college he applies to, he is forced to take drastic measures. Bartleby decides to create his own college and convince his parents he is enrolled there. He creates the South Hampton Institute of Technology and with the help of his friends renovates an old psychiatric institute. The idea catches the head of every college age kid that didn't get into college and they all enroll into his "school". The dean of the real Hampton College takes offense at the opening of the school and attempts to discredit Bartleby. The students must band together to keep the school open.

Going into the movie, you have to suspend your disbelief about the premise of the film. The entire population of parents in this town totally buys into the idea of a college on the site of this old psychiatric institute until they are suddenly shown the light by the evil dean from Hampton College. It is easy to forgive minor things like plot when you walk into a film and are just looking to laugh though. Well, this movie is never really funny. The writers and actors all seem to try to hard to be funny and nothing really seems to flow naturally. It actually has the opposite affect and comes across kind of awkward. There are a few jokes that are initially funny but if they aren't little one liners that were all included in the trailer, then they were run into the ground until all you can do is hope the director would move on to another joke to beat to death. A perfect example is a running joke in the film involving the name of the school. Because this is a family review, I'll let you figure it out for yourself. With an overwhelming list of better films with basically the same plot, all of which are available at your local video store, there really is no reason to check out this film.

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