Accepted

Heavily promoted as this generation's Animal House, with which it has much in common, Accepted has excised all elements of edginess that made previous generations’ revenge of the nerds movies classic. Sadly, the powers that be play it too safe in an attempt to keep the movie PG. Plus, the outcome is inevitable from the outset. When creatively lazy high schooler Bartleby "B” Gaines (Dodgeball’s pratfalling loser Justin Long) is not accepted into a single college to which he applied, he conspires with a few friends to create the South Harmon Institute of Technology (aka, S.H.I.T.), whose acceptance will appease their disappointed parents. Of course, events spiral out of control and Gaines and friends find themselves at the forefront of the fight for creativity over conformity. Comedian Lewis Black, who’s been paying the bills lately voicing cartoon characters on The Brak Show and Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law, may steal every scene he’s in with his manic, over-the-top rants as headmaster Uncle Ben but it’s the cast of young newcomers like Justin Long, Jonah Hill (Grandma’s Boy), Maria Thayer (Strangers With Candy) and Adam Herschman (making his film debut) who hold the movie together with inspired improv antics, some of which are revealed as alternate takes in the deleted scenes, gag real and other featurettes. The rest of the bonus features are mostly repetitive fluff with the exception of Hershman’s bid for a bigger role in "Adam’s Accepted Chronicles” and the somewhat revealing commentary from Black, Long, Hill, Hershman and Steve Pink (the Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity writer who makes his directorial debut here) that sometimes suffers from too many mouths moving at once. Accepted is an acceptable movie that makes two things clear: Lewis Black needs to be in more movies and Justin Long and Jonah Hill have bright futures ahead of them.