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Friday, August 18, 2006
A textbook case of the flat college comedy
As rebel college comedies go, "Accepted" has neither the raucous energy and impudence of "Animal House," the defiance of "If ...," nor the grace and wit of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle."
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View all photosJustin Long, best known as the user-friendly "I'm a Mac" guy in the Apple computer TV ads, leads this passive rebellion. After all his college applications are rejected, this ingenious high school prankster puts his misdirected brilliance to work in creating a fake school out of what looks like the abandoned set of "Saw."
Before you can chant "To-ga! To-ga!," he and his acceptance-challenged buddies have a real student body of misfits pouring into his members-only club, now a haven for all those rejected by every other school in town, complete with dorm, cafeteria, swimming pool, half-pipe and amusing acronym. Naturally the "students" of South Hardin Institute of Technology turn the initials into both a rallying cry and a school mascot.
"Accepted" ostensibly spoofs the atmosphere of college acceptance stress and the bureaucratic maze of paperwork and prerequisite bingo at those stuffy "official" colleges (you know, the accredited ones), but lacks the nerve to do much more than deflate pompous authority figures and ridicule shallow frat guys.
Long is a likable schlub whose sarcastic edge is barely unleashed before the film files it down to a dull cuteness. Even Lewis Black, as the cantankerous intellectual dropout cast as the college's cranky dean, is edited down to inoffensive rants.
By the time the underdog fighting spirit and confused message of self-actualization kicks in, the writers are simply cribbing -- badly -- from better, funnier films. Amiably banal and instantly forgettable, it gets a barely passing grade largely for just showing up.
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