Accepted

"Accepted" is an innocent and unevenly funny comedy that is destined to be repeated endlessly on Comedy Central. At the same time, its surprisingly tame tone also adds to its charm.

Justin Long stars as Bartleby Gaines, a high school graduate who has been rejected at the eight colleges he applied to. In order to avoid disappointing his parents and the humiliation he would suffer from his classmates who got into Ivy League schools, Bartleby and his friends, with a little help from Photoshop, create a fictional college. They manage to put together a website and letterhead for South Harmon Institute of Technology (get it?). While this was easy enough, the situation gets more complicated as his parents want to see the campus and meet with the dean. Just as they manage to pull this off, they are hit with the arrival of an entire entering class of students. Turns out, the online application for the school accepted anyone who applied.

When Bartleby prepares to admit the truth to everyone, he realizes he has created a safe haven for rejects like himself and has given hope to the hopeless. They end up creating their own course load and class design. This is the funny part of the movie. The protagonist to Bartleby's efforts is the stuffy dean of students at the neighboring college and the stereotypical frat boys who suck up to the dean. This bit seems directly copied from "Old School", but doesn't accomplish the same.

Long, who I've been a fan of since his days on TV's "Ed", proves he can carry a movie on his own and comes across naturally without being over the top. The other characters fit nicely into their roles as well, each with their own unique style. While nowhere near as funny as "Talladega Nights", "Accepted" provides enough laughs to justify its place on the summer comedy list. It's certainly rentable, but if you're looking for a comedy in the theaters this weekend, don't reject "Accepted". I give it a B+.

"Accepted" is rated PG-13 with a running time of 92 minutes.