Teen movies generally put forward the idea that high school is four years of torture and social striving, with bullying cliques of “cool” or “popular” kids who put everyone else down.

      College movies, on the other hand, present the next level of education as four years of sheer delight, partying hard in a kind of never-ending vacation. So it was with Animal House, Old School, and many others; so, too, is college as seen in Accepted, an Animal House for the new generation.

      Before taking off for college, the film gets in its digs at the high-school pecking order.  Our hero, Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long), is approached by teen queen Monica (Blake Lively), who reminds him that prom is approaching. Could she be suggesting they go together?

      No way.  Could he please mow her family’s lawn for the pre-prom party she is hosting – to which he is clearly not invited?  Ouch.

      Life seems to add insult to injury when Bartleby finds himself rejected by every college he applied to.  Unable to take the disappointment and scorn of his parents, he creates a fake college, the South Harmon Institute of Technology, which will allow him and some of his friends to ease the parents’ pain by accepting the rejected.

      Only problem is, his dad (Mark Derwin) is a suspicious sort who will check up on him.  First, Bartleby and company create a website for the college; then, when his parents mention how proud they’ll be to drop him off at college, he creates a campus out of a shuttered psychiatric hospital.  All this on his dad’s $10,000 tuition check?

      Unrealistic, yes. Such movies have a strong fantasy component, but does anyone really care that such hijinks are impossible? The plot is carried along by repeated threats of discovery, each fended off by Bartleby and the gang by perpetuating an even bigger fraud. 

      When it really gets out of hand is when hundreds of other kids arrive at South Harmon’s door.  Each has sent in his or her tuition, and Bartleby’s smart pal Schrader (Jonah Hill) has set up a bank account, so the schemers have plenty of money to make their vision real.  A “real” campus begins to emerge.

      Bartleby, realizing he’s in over his head, is ready to confess all to the prospective student body, but stops when he realizes that coming clean will destroy everybody’s dream – for many the only source of pride they have.  South Harmon Institute of Technology needs to be real.

      At neighboring Harmon University (where both Schrader and Monica are enrolled), Bartleby witnesses the dullest college lecture in the history of boredom and realizes that the “real” school’s students are in a constant, stressful frenzy, working at courses they don’t care about and losing any creativity they once had.

      At South Harmon, then, students will study what they want to – meditation for his type A friend Rory (Maria Thayer), art for former athlete Hands (Columbus Short), “doing nothing” for a sizeable portion of the student body.  Ironically, while most college films are dismissive of the actual curriculum, Bartleby’s unusual curriculum quickly turns South Harmon into a genuine, and exciting, learning environment.

      The movie’s narrative arc is predictable.  Eventually, the truth will out, the schemers will face dire consequences, but in the end they will triumph. 

      Despite its predictability, this movie works as a slightly kinder, gentler Animal House because of Long, an amiable young actor in a familiar role as the quick-witted but well-intentioned and loveable wise guy – much like Warren Cheswick, the character he played in the television show Ed.” You just want to like him – even if you’re a boring old college professor.

        This review appeared in the Aberdeen American News on August 20,  2006.

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This page last updated on August 30, 2006.