Ohio high schooler Bartelby Gaines (Justin Long) is horrified to learn he’s been rejected from every single college to which he applied. So have his best friends, in what amounts to the film’s first head-scratcher – these guys are smart, focused and determined, so why all this rejection?
All three guys and a girl believe their parents will be upset and hopelessly ashamed of them, so they have to come up with an alternative.
In a moment of inspiration, Gaines builds a website for a fictional South Harmon Institute of Technology, which incidentally, accepts them all.
Their parents hand over $10-grand each to cover tuition. That cuts too deeply into their collective conscience and they are determined at least to spend it in pursuit of knowledge.
In another moment of inspiration, they’re proving dangerous, Gaines lays out a plan to take over the abandoned former mental institution near the real Harmon College and just stay there all year. It’ll take a lot of work clearing out the filthy bathrooms, the electric shock rooms, padded cells, etc.
Hey, there is nothing else to do, certainly no grades to earn.
So imagine their surprise when dozens of other losers show up for class. The fake website somehow accepted all of them into the fake college.
‘Come on in!’ he says.
So fake college classes are now in session, with all the former rejects dreaming of a better future through education at South Harmon.
Gaines is a fraud three times over, swindling 10 large out of his parents, establishing an imaginary school and website, and accepting paying students.
The jokey stuff moves well, leaving little quiet downtime. Gags are rat-a-tat-tat, and often tasty, easily digestible.
One of the film’s smartest details is the attention to the action behind the action, so careful or you’ll miss ‘em.
Long is comedy’s newest “It” boy, after attention-getting appearances in ‘Dodgeball’ and ‘Waiting,’ and endless TV projects, most notably in the MAC ad campaign. He has an eye-rolling, sneering insolence and he makes it darn adorable.
His sidekicks, played by Jonah Hall, Adam Herschman and Columbus Short, do the job well enough, letting Long take the spotlight.
Hard hitting and hysterical stand up comedian Lewis Black is their fake Dean. Black is a revelation, a powerhouse of f-words and freethinking, flailing hands and darting eyes. He’s kind of fascinating, an accident waiting to happen, a verbal explosion that threatens to go off at any inappropriate moment.
Talk about dangerous – what brilliant casting. He makes the kids look like college professors.
Blake Lively plays the young lovely, the frat girl with long golden locks, the stuff of college dreams who discovers the real Harmon College isn’t all its cracked up to be.
This is humor for those with short attention spans. It’s fun, slick, simple and amusing.
You will leave the theater feeling somewhat jolly, but you won’t remember a single gag, just like eating cotton candy.
‘Accepted’ is a nice timewaster, but it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. The trailer is funny, the film is funny. Let it go at that.
Opens August 11th. MPAA: Rated PG13
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