Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: Accepted (2006)
December 17th 2008 23:38
“Accepted” is a college comedy. It is nothing really new in terms of its story line but it still speaks to a newer age audience. It utilises Justin Long’s great slapstick comedy style in a film that says you can’t be anyone but yourself but why would you want to be? This is a message that many other movies hold to the centre of their stories but I feel “Accepted” has created a great way of reinvigorating the message.
“Accepted” begins by looking at Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) who is a loveable loser. He isn’t a loser as in a sad pathetic guy with no friends, but he is actually rather charming, effervescent and outgoing but he doesn’t quite fit in. While his friend Shermon (Jonah Hill) gets accepted to a great college, Bartleby misses out on going to college. So he decides to cheat and fake his acceptance into college called the South Harmon Institute of Technology (or S.H.I.T for short) to try not to disappoint his parents. This begins an elaborate ruse in which a website is created, school insignia, a campus is rented and even a school Dean, who is a Shermon’s uncle, a washed up college professor and slightly nuts conspiracy theorist, played by Lewis Black is hired to try and fool his parents. When his friends who also missed out on college hear of this, they all want a piece of the action. Before they know it, it gets out of hand. The website, which was made to look as real as possible, made acceptance a click a way. So when the heaps of students turn up ready for orientation day, Bartleby quickly realises he is in too deep. Instead of turning everyone away, he instead accepts them and tries to give them some sort of a college experience. When he realises college breeds people who are uptight and stressed, he lets the students decide what they want to do. The move eventually descends into the fight between the made up South Harmon Institute of Technology and the serious Harmon Institute of Technology. When the Dean of the Harmon Institute of Technology gets the fake college shut down, it looks like they’ve won. But it goes to an education board decision to decide their fate.
The whole movie really angles works its way to the end where the obvious cliché impassioned speech is given to give them a chance. While you are expecting it the whole film, it is still a good ending. I have to admit it, I’m a bit of a sucker for an emotional speech which sums up the movie. It does look at the issue of being yourself. It is a good message to give, especially to its target audience of teenagers. With issues in the world of self perception and the ability out there to change yourself physically to look like someone else or following the lives of your favourite celebrity and trying to follow their story instead of forging your own, a movie with message of be yourself is very important. And anyway, why would you want to be anyone else. Even if you think your life is boring or something like that, you can do something truly great and important if you just put your mind to it. And the power of the masses will always rule over a self-important aristocracy. These are the main messages this film is trying to show.
It is a pretty clichéd story in the college comedy genre, but it has good slapstick and physical comedy as well as some humour for teenagers. It is by no means a classic film but it is a feel good comedy and a good way to spend a few hours. “Accepted” isn’t trying to be new or different, but it is trying to remind us, that in this culture where people want to be different to what they are, that it is just better to be yourself. I’d give this film 3 out of 5.
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