MPAA Rated – PG-13
It’s1:30 Long
A Review by:
– The Dude on the Right
| Accepted Movie Stats & Links |
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| Starring: | Justin Long, Lewis Black, Johah Hill, Blake Lively, Maria Thayer, Columbus Short |
| MPAA Rated: | PG-13 |
| Released By: | Universal Pictures |
| Kiddie Movie: | Lots of use of the SHIT moniker. |
| Date Movie: | Only if she enjoys childish humor. |
| Gratuitous Sex: | Lots of skimpy outfits. |
| Gratuitous Violence: | Nah. |
| Action: | Nah. |
| Laughs: | A few. |
| Memorable Scene: | Uncle Ben as the college Dean in front of Bartleby’s parents. |
| Memorable Quote: | Uncle Ben: “What’s wrong with saying ‘Nice tits.’?” |
| Directed By: | Steve Pink |
| Produced By: | Michael Bostick, Tom Shadyac |
I suppose I’ll just hit you with the story for “Accepted” and then give more a commentary rather than if the movie is any good. Here’s the story…
Justin Long is Bartleby, or as his friends call him, “B.” He’s graduating high school, where he comes across as one of those “too smart for their own good but doesn’t pay enough attention in class to get the grades” students. Sadly for Bartleby, he applies for eight colleges and gets rejected by all of them. His parents now feel he is a loser, some of his friends are in the same predicament, and to appease his folks for a spell he creates the fictional “South Harmon Institute of Technology.” Yup, SHIT. He gets his buddy Sherman (Johah Hill) to build a fake website so his dad will actually think he got into college, dad buys it, even giving him the $10,000 tuition. Bartleby thinks he has duped his dad, but now mom and dad want to drop him off at school and meet the Dean. What to do? Well Bartleby, with the help of his friends who have also found themselves accepted to SHIT, lease an old psychiatric hospital, clean it up a little bit, and even convince Sherman’s wacky Uncle Ben (Lewis Black), to pretend he is the Dean. With his parent’s fully duped, Bartleby and his friends think they have the next few months to figure out what to do next, that is until it turns out Sherman made the website a little too functional, and a slew of loser-type folks show up at the doors of SHIT, with checks for tuition in hand. Not wanting to turn them away, Bartleby, after do some investigating at the real Harmon College, decides that if you are going to SHIT, you will decide what you want to learn, and how you want to learn it.
And college life is going well for our loser-types, especially at this school, but things can never be that easy as the bullies at Harmon College want to close down SHIT, and they figure out a way. But the SHITheads band together, and all live happily ever after.
Pretty much the movie tries to pit the loser-type folks against the hoity-toity folks at Harmon (which wants really to be Harvard), and tests the long-term friendships developed since who knows when.
“Accepted” had a great premise, creating a college where you can major in anything you want, even if that is a class that might be about how to be a good kisser, or another titled “Wingman-ing 101.” So pretty much you are spending tuition dollars to find yourself rather than have someone else tell you what you should be. And you have a killer time. The problem with the movie, and maybe there will be the unrated version when it hits the DVD market, but here is a movie about maybe the greatest college ever, but it’s a PG-13 college. Your target market is pretty much the 17 to 22 year old crowd, and yet no one gets naked. And you are stuck with the PG-13 rule of only dropping the f-bomb once, complete with the second occurrence by Uncle Ben being bleeped out. Sure, by keeping it PG-13, now the younger ones can see the film, but I’m guessing most high-school freshmen and sophomores can’t relate yet where there are going to spend their post high-school time partying. The movie just couldn’t push the envelope of being a college movie near-classic, on par with a “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Road Trip,” or even “EuroTrip,” first off simply because it got lost in PG-13 muck, and I would have actually preferred they show what some of the more creative classes like “Wingman-ing 101” were actually like. That would have had more potential than the typical “us versus the frat boys” story.
I did laugh a few times during “Accepted,” especially during a lot of Uncle Ben’s rants, but man, I think the movie folks really dropped the ball on this one by leaving it for the younger teen crowd. Personally I think they should have “R”’d it up, opened it in September when the college kids are back, and publicize the hell out of it to them.
Oh well, I’ll just wrap it up by saying “Accepted” as a PG-13 movie gets 2 stars out of 5. If they had ramped it up to the R side, it could have easily gotten 3 ½ or more.
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!
Yup, it’s a buddy movie, and the other comparison people are making is to “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” only this movie doesn’t have any pillows (Thinking about it, it almost would have been a nice little tribute by the movie makers to make a nod to that scene, but hey, that’s just me), instead we get Jamie Foxx as Darryl, who may or may not be the father of Sarah’s child, we get Juliette Lewis who is a pretty funny pot dealer, and we get a scene where probably each and every one of us would like to “discipline” a child in the manner Peter does, only we know we would probably end up in jail.
I really liked “Due Date,” and really don’t want to give away any of the jokes because when they hit they usually come out of left field, and are better left to be served up in the moment, but the one scene I will ruin, and it’s the scene that took me out of the movie, was when Peter gets arrested by some Mexican border police dudes, and then Ethan steals not only the border police vehicle, but also is able to hitch up the trailer the police are keeping Peter in, and bring Peter along for the ride. This is the scene that, for me, took all plausibility of the movie out of reality (Okay, it wasn’t the only scene,) although, I will state, that a number of people in the theater did find the ensuing police chase funny.
…I guess I hate to put it this way, but it seems that “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” is a dudette flick. I say this simply by viewing it with my fiancé, whom, after we finished the movie, simply said “It was under two hours. It had a happy ending. I liked it.” Yup, my fiancé has a pretty simple scale for her liking of movies, and yes, she does have to actually like the movie, but as the credits started to roll, and I looked at her and said “Ehh,” she stated her case based on her ratings scale, I said “Really, you liked it?” and she replied “Yes I did.” Hmm?…
As far as the Blu-ray kinds of stuff, I still am trying to figure out why the Blu-ray version has a deleted scene that does nothing, really, but show some cut off heads on a platter. It does, though, for movie buffs, give an interesting, kind of “commentary” track, where if you watch the movie via the “Bonus Features” menu, there will be this dagger that shows up every now and then that if you use your remote, you can get a boat-load of “making of,” “how did they do that,” and tidbits about the movie. It’s kind of cool, at least the first couple of times, but it does get a little tedious waiting for the “dagger” to do it’s magic every time – I suggest using the index to see the things you really want to learn about quicker.
“21,” being the Hollywood take of the actual story, of course changes a whole bunch of things about the story, but it’s probably better because the actual story, while fascinating, would be pretty boring on the big screen. At its core, though, is the basic concept of using a team to gaining the upper hand at the tables, though I’m doubting any of the original team members found themselves running through the casino kitchen trying to get away from casino goons.