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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Scores pretty high on the comedy finals, 16 Feb 2007
Let's say you've been something of an underachiever in high school, living a Ferris Bueller-like life and not exactly hitting the books very hard. You're a pretty cool guy, but now it's time to face reality. The closest you've gotten to the class hottie is her front lawn (which she flirted you into mowing for her) and - horror of horrors - every single college you applied to has turned you down flat (which is going to come as quite a blow to your parents). What do you do? Well, naturally, there's only one thing to do - have your nerdy best friend (Jonah Hill) create a fancy web site for a nonexistent college, fake an acceptance letter from said college, and use dad's tuition money to lease an abandoned mental hospital that you can clean up and pass off as an actual educational institution. It helps if you have a few friends joining you in this whole crazy scheme - friends like Hands (Columbus Short), who lost his athletic scholarship because of an injury, Glen (Adam Herschman), who probably can't even spell college, and Rory (Maria Thayer), a totally cute redhead who only applied to one school (Yale) and had her cherished dreams dashed at the manicured hands of smarmy Ivy League administrators who probably all talk like Thurston Howell, III. Certainly, it takes some work to turn a filthy, abandoned loony bin into a "college" impressive enough to fool your parents when they drop you off, but it's going to be all fun and games after they leave, right? It might be - if about 300 other folks didn't show up with acceptance letters and tuition money in hand (seems that good old Sherman made the college web site a little too functional).
Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long), the brainchild of this whole fake college dream, doesn't have the heart to turn all these students away from the hallowed halls of South Harmon Institute of Technology - these are all people who want to learn but have no chance of ever getting into a real school. Bartleby is totally BMOC, and his ideas to let the students choose what they want to do goes over really big. Who wouldn't want to learn how to rock your face off in the afternoon and then settle in for a leisurely night of Babe Watching 101? Okay, so they don't have any tests, or books, or even a faculty - apart from their dean (played to hilarious effect by Lewis Black), who just left a promising career as a bitter shoe salesman - but these crazy misfit kids actually start to learn a few things. Even the students over at the prestigious Harmon College start mingling around the place, including Monica (Blake Lively), the aforementioned hottie who starts thinking Bartleby is a better guy than her conceited future lawyer of a boyfriend.
Yep, things are looking pretty good for old Bartleby and friends. Then, of course, the world crashes in on them when reality, in the form of Dean Van Horne (Anthony Heald) from Harmon, calls Bartleby's incredibly huge bluff. Will this be the end of the South Harmon Institute of Technology forever? Will this bold experiment at untraditional higher education simply disappear, breaking the hearts and thwarting the minds of all the unacceptable students S.H.I.T. accepted? Will Monica, in disgust at such rank duplicity, abandon Bartleby before he even gets a chance to get to second base with her?
Obviously, Accepted has one of the most farcical plots you're likely to come across, but it's a pretty darn good comedy that plays better than you would expect, especially when it gets that whole underdog thing going. You can't help but like Bartleby and company, the outrageous diversity of the student body serves up many a memorable character (such as the A.D.D. kid, the big, menacing guy most likely to go crazy in boot camp like that soldier in Full Metal Jacket, and a young lady who just gave up stripping to go back to school). You even have Deal or No Deal's Lisa, who trades in her revealing dresses for an even more revealing bikini. You might even say the movie makes an actual point or two about the system of higher education, which has certainly been known to turn away kids who may struggle but really want to learn in favor of some students who get in to good schools because of connections or money alone and then sleepwalk their way through four years of highly structured classes. Don't hold me to that "this movie actually has something to say" thing, though. Accepted is really all about the comedy, and I must say it certainly kept me well entertained throughout.
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