Admittedly, I went into the theater with low expectations. The Premise of director Steve Pink’s “Accepted” is almost frighteningly implausible. Essentially, Justin “I’m-a-Mac” Long plays academically frustrated genius Bartleby Gains who, failing to actually be granted acceptance from any university he applies to, instead founds his own fake university.
His goal is to appease his parents’ hard-line attitudes towards the importance of college.
Obviously, in a market gushing with superhero and horror films, the implausibility or even impossibility of a film’s premise has little to do the quality of the film.
In the genre of comedies, however, the further a central theme of the movie drifts from reality, the more it often becomes the film’s single joke.
The plot can frustrate the movie into a single slap-stick comedy rather than taking a simple concept and transforming it into something ridiculous, showered by jokes.
An embarrassing example of the former is “Sorority Boys” while masterpieces such as “Meet the Parents” and “Wedding Crashers” highlight the latter.
On the shoulders of essentially brilliant casting (including the “Daily Show’s” Lewis Black) and side-splitting dialogue, “Accepted” somehow escapes its own irritating premise and tumbles across the finish line as being not only tolerable, but genuinely and delightfully funny.
Jonah Hill plays an overweight, competent genius who is best friends with Long’s character.
His character, Sherman Schrader, is essentially written as an antidote for the movie’s premise, stepping in with witty quips to remind both audience and characters that the movie really fairly ridiculous.
In addition to Hill, Adam Herschman is thrown into the mix. He is a talent discovered by Steve Pink, making his cinematic debut as Glen.
Glen is a character who is so out of touch with reality that it is amazing he has the ability to dress himself each day. Glen was written into “Accepted” upon director Steve Pink’s discovery of Herschman, specifically to give Herschman’s natural comedic abilities room to breathe.
Ultimately, the film’s savior is Long himself. He is an actor finally ascending to his much-deserved popularity after flying relatively under the pop culture radar. Long possesses an easy charm that has long afforded him the ability to shine in almost any role he has undertaken, but particularly those demanding the delivery of measured doses of wit and charisma.
Unfortunately, though, the film’s thin plot literally requires this charm as audience members may not be completely pleased by the entire storyline.
Fortunately, with Long in this comedy’s pilot seat, the film doesn’t even come close to crashing.After walking out of “Accepted,” I was left with a large stack of questions regarding the film.
Why were there no parents dropping the kids off at college except for one? Why did the students seem to spend the entire movie sleeping in the school’s yard? Why didn’t anyone notice that the school wasn’t accredited? These questions and so many others fade easily away as I granted “Accepted” one last question: “When was the last time I laughed that hard for that long?”
