Much like watching your millionaire parents get slain by a desperate thug and then donning a prototype armored suit to fight crime, Accepted is unquestionably a lot of fun. As with most teen comedies however, it should not be overanalyzed or compared to films it has no intentions of emulating. My biggest objection with the film was simply the PG-13 rating which seemed to barricade some of its potential.

Justin Long stars as Bartleby Gaines who has been rejected from every school he’s applied to. Desperate to please his disconcerted parents, who believe college is a mandatory part of life, Bartleby decides to scan a rejection letter and create a phony letter of acceptation from a fictitious school. Appropriately dubbed the South Harmon Institute of Technology (S.H.I.T.), Bartleby gets his best friend Sherman (Jonah Hill) to create an official-looking website for the school, which escalates the ruse. Along with a group of misfits, including Columbus Short, Adam Herschman and Maria Thayer, who similarly failed to be accepted to a college, Gaines accesses an abandoned insane asylum as a further façade for his parents, who plan on dropping him off at college on his first day. Sherman’s Uncle Ben (Lewis Black) is additionally recruited to act as the dean for the institute. Hilarity ensues as Bartleby and his friends discover that hundreds of other rejected kids have accidentally been accepted to South Harmon, and so the makeshift staff decides to help these outcasts rather than turn them away.

The majority of the cast fits in perfectly as idiosyncratic oddballs, and Justin Long turns in somewhat of an inspirational performance as the rejected student who struggles to create a sense of belonging for him and the other “S.H.I.T.heads” dragged into the mayhem. Lewis Black basically plays himself, and is uproarious with his exaggerated hand motions and constant rants about society. Jonah Hill is also exceptional, and has the majority of hilarious and memorable one-liner jokes in the film. Although he plays the token fat kid, he brings a twist to the stereotype that never dulls through the course of the movie. Anthony Heald plays the villainous, neighboring school’s Dean Richard Van Horne, who wishes to tear down the South Harmon campus to make room for a luxurious walkway leading to his esteemed Harmon College. (You may remember him most clearly as Dr. Chilton from The Silence of the Lambs.) Although the plot is outrageous and could literally never transpire, the film does an admirable job of making everything seem plausible at least while you’re watching it happen. The interaction between Bartleby and his love interest Monica (Blake Lively) is predictable and cliché, as was the conflicts with his best friend Sherman, however in reaching those situations lays the brilliance and ingenuity. The roles may seem conventional, but the characters are not (except for the token black guy who oddly doesn’t have an opportunity to provide very many laughs). It’s likely you’ll forget most of what you’ve seen shortly after the movie ends, but there’s no denying that the film is entertaining, fun and captivating while you watch it.

The screenplay is hysterical, although peculiarly devoid of strong language, and the situations and central plot points are well executed. The film is relatively short and suitably paced. The target audience is clearly college kids, and yet for some unperceived reason, the creators decided to push for the PG-13 rating instead of R. Although this allows for younger audiences to actually purchase tickets (otherwise they’ll buy tickets for a different film and sneak into the R-rated one), it also deters the college kids themselves from going, who feel PG-13 is not mature enough. Nudity and strong language don’t belong in every film, but this one could have been funnier and raunchier with little additions that were probably originally shot only to be ousted later on. Recently studios seem to be ignoring the statistics about the rating system and how they affect their films. PG-13 is increasingly more for kids and the adult audiences just don’t want to see films that are obviously edited down for content. The trailers lead you to believe it will be an American Pie style film, but it’s difficult to compare the two, since Accepted is a bit too squeaky clean. However, no dull moments prevail, and although some of the jokes don’t work, they are quickly subdued by stronger and more elaborate gags. I was disappointed that the soundtrack wasn’t a little more diverse or perhaps more recognizable, but it never detracted from the film.

I would have liked to see some riskier content, but overall the film delivers its witticism and laughs effortlessly. I’m sure that when it’s released on DVD we’ll have the opportunity to see an unrated, extended version which will hopefully contain several scenes that can be deemed indispensable. While there are multitudes of teen comedies out there, (Talladega Nights will probably be its main rival at the box office) Accepted has undeniable charm, excellent character acting, and of course the always cynical favorite, Lewis Black.

- Mike Massie