Accepted

January 30, 2007

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 92 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Accepted is yet another movie that I didn’t expect much from, but ended up liking anyway. Sure, it sticks pretty close to the formula you’d expect from a movie like this, but that’sok, it was amusing.

Accepted Justin Long plays Ferris…er.. Bartleby, a high school senior who’s excellent at talking his way out of trouble but never bothered to expend that same energy to get himself decent grades. As a result, every college he’s applied to has rejected him, even State. Apparently he’s never heard of community college and when his parents flip out upon discovery of his lack of acceptance he decides his best course of action is to create his own college. When he gets his acceptance letter his parents are quite proud and his dad just hands him a check for 10 grand to pay for tuition. Yeah, that would happen.

Bartleby’s plan was to lay low while working on a better plan but unfortunately his dad wants to drop him off for the first day of school. Time to spend some money!Bartleby and a few friends lease an old mental hospital and make it look like the school and get some “extras” to mill around like students. They actually pull this off (uh-huh) and things are looking good until a few hundred additional students show up. Seems the fake website that was put up to fool the parents managed to attract many underachievers with stupid parents willing to fork over 10K checks at the drop of a hat.

Anyway, Bartleby puts together a class schedule of sorts and the place starts to run like a typical art college. This is until the evil Ivy league school wannabe up the road decides they need the land for their own sinister uses. Yep, I left a lot out up to this point, but does it really matter?

Accepted is better than I expected, but it isn’t going to win any awards. The acting is as good as you’ll find in this type of movie and I really don’t have any complaints about it other than it being too predictable. I’m only giving it 3 stars, but it’s a strong 3 stars.

Posted by John | Filed Under 3 Stars, Adam Herschman, Columbus Short, Comedy, DVD, Jonah Hill, Justin Long, Maria Thayer, PG-13