UK Release: 6th October 2006
Accepted will certainly strike a chord with young people undergoing the stresses of the university admissions procedure; whether anyone else shows an interest will depend on their liking for lighthearted sophomoric fun.
Justin Long plays Bartleby Gaines, a chipper teen who is turned down by all his college choices. Instead of retiring to his bedroom to sulk for a couple of years, he enterprisingly creates a college for himself and his fellow rejects. The resulting university’s unorthodox curriculum includes courses on “Doing Nothing” and “How to Blow Stuff Up with Your Mind” — a more useful preparation for life, surely, than the ubiquitous Media Studies.
This is good-hearted nonsense carried off with some aplomb by first-time director Steve Pink and his young cast. But, while it’s certainly an antidote to the scatological teen-humour seen in EuroTrip and the American Pie franchise, it never quite reaches the heights of its obvious inspiration, John Hughes’s classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
***
UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 93mins
Review by Adam Smith
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