'Accepted' has just enough class to be mediocre comedy
If you're into snap judgments, write off "Accepted" for what it is, a doltish "college" comedy with characters so generic they could have come from any youth "party" comedy from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" to "Old School," "Can't Hardly Wait" to "American Pie."
But there's a quality to "Accepted," a snap to the one-liners, a zip to the directing and editing, and a star turn by Justin Long ("Waiting ...," "Dodgeball"). And that makes it, well, not terrible.
The clue to why this might be is in the credits. Steve Pink — apparently his real name — directed. His screenplay credits: "High Fidelity," "Grosse Pointe Blank."
So yeah, it's an over-familiar comedy about high-school failures who tire of rejection letters and invent their own college, setting up online registration, renting an abandoned mental hospital and partying like it's 1979.
And sure, there's Comedy Central's Lewis Black, ranting and cursing as Pied Piper to the would-be collegians who first hire him to "teach," and hang on his every word about "the system," "the man," and how they're really there to learn to be "good little consumers."
But you're going to laugh. At throw-away lines, such as Mom's (Ann Cusack) reaction to "I don't really need to go to college."
"Are you huffing?"
At the endless jokes played off the acronym for the name of the imaginary college — South Harmon Institute of Technology. At the students' nickname for themselves (acronym plus "heads").
It's not as well-financed, as ambitious or as mean as the bloated "Talladega Nights." But it has roughly the same number of decent jokes. And the timing here is better. Comedy is fast. Pink, if that's his real name, gets that.
Half-witted it may be, but as back-to-school time-killers go, "Accepted's" right on the edge of acceptable.
<B>TITLE:</B> "Accepted"<B>DIRECTOR:</B> Steve Pink<B>CAST:</B> Justin Long, Lewis Black, Maria Thayer, Jonah Hill<B>RATING:</B> PG-13 for language, sexual material and drug content<B>GRADE:</B> 2 Stars (out of 5)
