ACCEPTED Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Universal Pictures
Grade: C
Directed by: Steve Pink
Written By: Ada, Cooper, Bill Collage
Cast: Justin Long, Adam Herschman, Jonah Hill, Blake Lively,
Mark Derwin, Columbus Short, Kellan Lutz, Maria Thayer
Screened at: AMC 84th St., NYC, 8/3/06
Opens: August 11, 2006 In a movie that has few laugh-out-loud lines despite its animal-house ambiance, “Accepted” does have one prize-winner for both audience grins and prescience. Uncle Ben (Lewis Black), an eccentric with strong views who is acting as the dean of the new, phony South Harmon Institute of Technology, tells a group of students, “You’ve got four years of fun, and then you’re [bleeped].” It’s a testament to callow youth that many cannot wait until they graduate and join the “real” world, when the out-of-town college experience is about as real as the kids will ever get. Like, what, accounting and law are real? “Accepted” is a broad comedy targeted at the teen-to twenties market that might have been more amusing were it not so unoriginal. The trajectory is commonplace: losers become winners after going through a trial by fire and emerging with high self confidence. The jokes are of the usual vulgar kind, though there are no donkeys in sight to which (or with which) anyone might want to become engaged. Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long), the lead character who does most of the talking and conning, is so articulate that you wonder why all eight colleges he applied to rejected him. This is the story of a guy who could not get into the established colleges, so he believed he had only one choice. Make an authentic-looking letterhead on his color printer and show his folks that he did indeed become a student, one likely to reap the benefits that the sheepskin used to confer on all of its recipients. Apparently he never heard of state or community institutions, but maybe this energetic fellow figured he would have more fun at a place where he allowed students to determine their own curriculums than if he took the usual courses in Lit 101 and the like. Taking occasional leave of his long-term best friend Sherman Schrader (Jonah Hill)–who attends the nearby, highly reputable Harmon College–Gaines finds himself inundated with prospective students who, like him, were not accepted anywhere else but simply clicked a button on the South Harmon Institute of Technology website and got accepted instantly. Planning their own programs–which include building ramps for skateboards, driving motorcycles into a pool, and watching all the girls go by, the kids do learn valuable lessons, that is, if you really believe that building sliding ponds will teach you the principles of physics and engineering. The love interest centers on Gaines and his formerly platonic friend, Monica (Blake Lively), who had been dabbling in an affair with the handsome, preppy lad from Harmon (Travis Van Horne), who heads that school’s WASPiest fraternity, while the conflict takes root when Harmon’s Dean Van Horne (Anthony Heald) plots to put South Harmon out of business in order to take over the land. This is pretty tame stuff, a same-ol’s plea to do what you love and to try to avoid squeezing yourself too snugly to fit into society’s norms. Steve Pink’s movie is his directorial debut, as if you couldn’t guess. Rated PG-13. 90 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
