A recent newspaper article focused on schools in and out of our area where there is no rigid curriculum. Instead, the students get to decide how they're going to spend their day, be that actually doing real school work (as if), playing video games, or generally just bumming around. The excuse, uh, rationale behind this is that it supposedly nurtures creativity, introspective thoughts, and other such nonsense.
Of course, the true litmus test of such education is whether such "students" can find a college that will accept them and/or get a job after or in lieu of that. Then again, they could simply enroll at the South Harmon Institute of Technology. What, you've never heard of that? Why it's the fictitious college that, appropriately enough, is made up by a high school graduate in "Accepted."
An "Animal House" wannabe, this purported comedy doesn't even come close to that collegiate cinema classic, and that's even taking into account that the 1978 film wasn't really that good. Occasionally funny? You bet. Outrageous? Definitely. But anything that could be considered brilliant (outside Belushi's terrific performance)? Not hardly.
That said, it looks like Shakespeare (if the Bard were a college frat boy) in comparison to this mess. In fact, it's rather ironic that the film repeatedly plays up the school's acronym (the "s" word, for those too lazy to abbreviate) as that's an accurate term for this piece of trash. If I didn't know any better, I'd guess that some of the cast and crew attended (but probably didn't graduate from) the South Harmon Institute of Technology Film School.
That's because this pic feels as if it was put together following that freewheeling, "anything goes" philosophy rather than adhering to that stuffy old moviemaking regime requiring those awful elements such as story, characters and creativity and/or wit.
All of which is too bad since the film does stem from a real-life dilemma for many a high school student -- getting into college. With increased competition, higher standards, and exorbitant tuition and boarding fees, it can be hard out there for a pimp (oops, sorry, wrong movie) -- a teenager not only to figure out what they want to study and where to go, but also how to achieve that.
Alas, the filmmakers -- director Steve Pink and screenwriters Adam Cooper & Bill Collage and Mark Perez -- forgo most of that as they focus on one Bartleby Gaines ( Justin Long, the kid from those Mac vs. PC commercials) having already been turned down by every school to which he's applied. Facing parental pressure and their embarrassment over apparently having raised a failure, he makes up a fake school, has a friend create a faux website for the institution, and then thinks he's sitting pretty.
As is to be expected, the complications set in, meaning his parents want to drop him off at the nonexistent school and meet the nonexistent dean. Accordingly, he and his friends (played by Jonah Hill, Maria Thayer, and Columbus Short) lease a vacant mental hospital and set out to fool everyone. But their ploy is too convincing as the fake website results in an entire class of fellow college application rejects who've applied and been accepted to the institute.
While nothing terribly brilliant, I could accept that setup, but only if the cast and crew did something fun, funny, unique or smart with the material. Considering the "humorous" material that preceded the above, however, I shouldn't have been surprised that the "comedy" offerings would be banal at best.
Seemingly having studied every college comedy that graduated before this freshman film was born, the filmmaker offer outrageously funny bits such as the pledge hazing at the frat house, the drunken parties, the skateboards and motorcycle in the pool bit, the rival, snooty college that wants to shut down the shenanigans, the romance with the pretty coed, and much more.
Beyond them being recycled, they're aren't remotely funny or creative, and they're just randomly offered as if the filmmakers had a hat filled with such scene ideas and then filmed whatever they pulled out, not caring if or how they fit into the overall scheme of things. I understand it's all supposed to be zany nonsense -- supposedly all the better to play to its target demographic -- but there needs to be some smarts behind the guffaws, and none is present here.
Not surprisingly, the performances are as flat as the rest of the material. Gaines makes for a bland and less than engaging protagonist, and Lewis Black's angry white man shtick gets progressively tiresome with each outburst. Blake Lively (from "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants") still looks quite fetching, but is trapped in a stereotypical pretty girl role with no other noteworthy qualities, while Anthony Heald is clearly no John Vernon (from "Animal House") when it comes to portraying stuffy college deans.
I really want to say that this failure needs to be held back a grade, but that would only mean having to suffer through it again. And I wouldn't want to subject that even on the worst school bully (then again, maybe I would). Whatever you do, don't accept "Accepted" for what it is, a weakly conceived and executed collegiate flick. It gets a 2 out of 10.
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