Film Review — Accepted
Directed by Steve Pink and written by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage and Mark Perez, ‘Accepted’ is an American comedy film released in 2006. The film starred Justin Long as its main character, along with Blake Lively, Jonah Hill, Anthony Heald, and Lewis Black. The filming took place at Chapman University in Orange, California and Los Angeles. Later on, it was remade as a Bollywood film titled F.A.L.T.U.
Set in a town called Harmon, Bartleby ‘B’ Gaines was rejected by every college to which he applied. Attempting to get away from his parents concern about his ruined life, he faked an acceptance letter from a fictive college ‘The South Harmon Institute of Technology’. In order to make his parents — especially his father — believed about this fake college, he convinced his best friend Sherman Schrader (who had been accepted into the ‘real’ Harmon college) to create a website for this college. To make this even more believable, Bartleby renovates an abandoned psychiatric hospital near Harmon College as his campus. Hiring Sherman’s uncle as a dean, he finally managed to get his parents convinced.
The plan was successful, until hundreds of students swarm in, claiming that they had been accepted in the fake college. Turned out, Sherman had actually made the website functioning properly. As Bartleby realized that these students are also rejected from every other college they applied to, he sincerely welcomed them at his college and encourages them to follow their passion in life by allowing them to do whatever they wish to study.
Meanwhile, the real Harmon college finally found out about his fake college running illegally and exposed this fact to the parents. Bartleby was forced to shut down his college, but instead he files for accreditation with the help from Sherman and his uncle. After a convincing speech, he received a one-year probationary accreditation to test his system.
This film contained a beautiful moral about not being afraid of rejection, following your passion and to make a comfortable studying place for students. Unfortunately, it also features a large percentage of negative content — offensive language, inappropriate clothing, crude jokes, etc.
Overall, the concept of this film was really good, for example encouraging students to follow their passion and goals. As someone who is about to go to college myself, I really appreciate the idea of this film. But, it would be much better if there weren't so many inappropriate content throughout the movie.