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Film review

Old-school stupidity

Accepted is vaguely reminiscent of some classic campus movies. Except for the absent laughs.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published August 17, 2006

Low expectations can be a wonderful thing.

Previews for Accepted make it look like a low-rent rip-off of Animal House or an homage to Revenge of the Nerds with obvious humor, extreme implausibility and a dearth of wit and originality.

Pretty much, that's what it delivers. But because of some likable performances, and a refreshing lack of the kind of excrement jokes that saturate adolescent comedies these days, Accepted ends up being bearable. That's a pleasant surprise.

Let's not overstate the case, though. Accepted isn't much fun and it's not funny. The entire movie rests on a ridiculous concept that, with every plot turn, becomes even harder to believe. The jokes are familiar and the attempt at an inspirational message at the end may be the most moronic element of the entire movie.

The plot is that a group of high school seniors haven't been able to get into college. So to avoid their parents' wrath, they invent a fake college, set up an official-looking Web site and mail themselves phony acceptance letters.

Enrolling in a local community college apparently never occurs to them. Neither does the possibility that parents might want to visit this nearby school they've never heard of.

So when the parents want to see the place, the kids use their tuition money to rent an abandoned mental hospital and renovate it to look like a school. They call it South Harmon Institute of Technology, the acronym for which is the basis of about half the movie's jokes.

They almost get away with it until a bunch of other losers show up after visiting the Web site. So the original students take all that tuition money and expand the "school," offering courses such as "rocking out" and "walking around thinking about stuff."

The actors (most of whom are obviously in their mid 20s) seem to be having some fun despite the idiocy of the script, and at times the core group (Justin Long, Adam Herschman and, especially, Jonah Hill) makes the movie close to palatable. Comedian Lewis Black (The Daily Show) provides an amusing but predictable performance as a curmudgeonly "dean" and Anthony Heald essentially reprises his glaring, repressed character from Boston Public.

Accepted is stupid beyond belief. But it's not a painful experience, which makes it a lot better than the trailers would indicate, and better than many other youth-oriented comedies of recent years.

Accepted

GRADE: D+

DIRECTOR: Steve Pink

CAST: Columbus Short, Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Adam Herschman, Blake Lively

SCREENPLAY: Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Mark Perez

RATING: PG-13; language, sexual material and drug content

RUNNING TIME: 100 min.

[Last modified August 15, 2006, 11:56:45]