Accepted (2006) Review: An Anarchic School Comedy
For Steve Pink, choosing to direct a school comedy/drama film as his feature-length directorial debut in 2006 is no surprise. Movies about school were increasingly popular circa the 1980s until the early 2000s, and it has come with several types of cadences. There is a sci-fi touch on Back to the Future (1985), race, sport, and American dreams on semi-biographical Hoop Dreams (1994), Jane Austen classic parody/homage by Clueless and even classic 21st-century teens problem of unexpected pregnancy on Juno (2007). Although these movies are critically acclaimed and seen as revolutionary, they just couldn’t quench Pink’s thirst. He wanted his school movie to stand out from another, to change people’s perspective of the school itself. And as the result, Accepted, the manifestation of his idea, is a quite standout one. But frankly, cannot be outstanding as it is aspired to be.
Accepted is a fast-paced movie, focusing on a self-righteous main character, Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long), an underachieving senior student who has scored eight out of eight rejection letters from colleges he applied to. Although he doesn’t mind being not accepted, the real embarrassment is on his parent’s side. In the attempt to gain approval from his parents, especially his demanding father, he and his same, ill-fated friends, band together to “invent a college” where they can get accepted in. They build the main campus off of an abandoned asylum, refine its façade and some of its interior, create an “official” website of it, and even hire his friend’s peculiar, ex-professor uncle to be a dean (Lewis Black), just to make the college seems more legitimate. And finally, from their advanced forgery skills, extensive brainstorming, rigorous labor work, and internet wizardry, South Harmon Institute of Technology is born and it is ready to begin its first academic year.
The college is an unpredicted, instant success. The enrollment turn-out for their college is far beyond the expectation, thanks to an unintended advertising. Bartleby and his friends soon have to figure out how to run, not just to make the college. Derived from his inspirational, moving, and possibly self-affirming speech at the freshmen welcoming night, Bartleby decides to do a very democratic, innovative move: forming the college classes based on what the students honestly want to study. Of course, things get wilder and more bizarre from there: Hooking Up Overseas 405, Advanced Skepticism 401, Hitting on Strippers 105, Doing Nothing 405, psychokinesis, and any other classes you may never think of. The learning, or more precisely, self-learning processes are conducive. Everyone can do what they want, unrestricted, be happy about it, and doesn’t have to care about their parents’ grumbles anymore. Because they all have been accepted anyway.
The first half of the movie seems pretty solid, but as it goes on, it just runs out of content to fill its feature-length curriculum. Only when the college starts to fall apart (like any anarchic system will) we can finally understand what really is the movie trying to say. From that part, we can conclude that we are watching a movie with a subtext of self-affirmation and a not-so-subtle dig at modern American higher education system as nothing more than a Darwinian training ground for teens to find jobs and money. But there is a quirky and hollow storyline that we have to get through just to reach the main concept of the movie. Cheap romantic intermezzos between the main character and his crush, Monica Morland (Blake Lively), and dull jokes by the characters sometimes feel out of place. They just can’t help Accepted carry its very useful and heavy message. The resolvent feels incomplete, too, since it acts only as an armistice, leaving the main problem unsolved. So whenever they are celebrating their victory, they have to know that they are just pretending.
You can notice that Accepted tries to invite diverse circles of viewers by being PG-13-safe and tagging together “school” and “comedy” label just to make it more appealing to the younger audience. Pink wanted his movie to score a major number for Box Office, despite only making around $38 million versus its own $23 million budget. Clearly, this is not a movie that will end up in any year-end chart of best movies, but let’s just be realistic: we want a light, simple, sidesplitting, downright silly school comedy movie to laugh at on our TV together with our friends or family. Accepted can be that movie to you because it has sacrificed its depth and seriousness. And as for teenagers, especially who are feeling misjudged by the stereotyping environment, this movie may feel like home, since it invokes the undercurrent of your adolescent rage. And that is what the director really wants you to feel. Because essentially, that is all this movie about.
Verdict: 2.5 / 5
P.S. If you haven’t noticed what the school’s acronym spells out, this movie is very happy to remind you. Over and over.