When Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) gets rejected by all eight colleges he has applied for, he goes into panic mode. Perhaps he can convince his parents that college is an unnecessary waste of money and that he would rather jump straight into the work force? Or maybe not.

While Bartleby has shown little interest in applying himself in high school, thus his current predicament, he has shown a talent and an affinity for faking it...that is creating fake IDs for his fellow students.

Armed with a camera and a computer, Bartleby and his best friend Sherman Schrader add a few years to their classmates’ age for a certain price.

After telling his parents he did not get into any institute of higher learning, Bartleby creates a letter of acceptance from a fictional college in order to buy some time.

Sherman builds a Web site to accompany Bartleby’s fake acceptance letter, and Bartleby’s parents fall for it hook, line and sinker; writing a check for the first semester’s tuition of $10,000.

When Bartleby’s friends (whose college plans also are not working out as planned) find out that he has fooled his parents, they want in; an acceptance letter or two later and they are looking for a facility to lease for move in day. After all, the parents may be willing to send their kid to a college they had never heard of and they may be willing to hand a check over to their kid for a semester’s tuition, but they aren’t going to pack up their kid and send him on his way; they want to drop him off at the dorm.
A condemned psychiatric hospital, more than a few gallons of paint and lots of elbow grease later, and it’s move in day. The “slacker” crew has turned the leased facility into a decently believable campus.

However, when the doors to the fake college open, Bartleby and crew discover a much bigger problem than they had anticipated: 300 high school graduates, rejected from every institute just like Bartleby, have received their very own “acceptance” letters from South Harmon Institute of Technology, oops!

When the neighboring prestigious Harmon University finds out that South Harmon has moved in, they plan to put a stop to their unconventional teaching methods and behavior. Will Bartleby and his friends cave under the pressure as losers who aren’t able to do anything right? Or will they fight back against the system and show “the man” that while they may be rejects they can band together and do something of importance? You can probably guess; this is a feel-good comedy after all.

Blake Lively costars as Monica, Bartleby’s dream girl and next door neighbor. Gorgeous and sweet she is dating frat boy and ultimate jerk, Hoyt Ambrose (played by local celeb Travis Van Winkle).

In many ways, “Accepted” has all the elements for a cheesy comedy that should go down in history with little remembrance; but on closer examination, it rises above the traditional cliches and potential pitfalls that trip up many teenage comedies.

Justin Long takes on the role full force and molds Bartleby into the likable loser. While his character has his flaws, he maintains a certain dignity and realism about him at the same time. Long is best known for his role in the television show “Ed” and most recently was seen as the hilarious gallery assistant to Jennifer Aniston’s character in “The Break-Up.” He’s on his way up, and I expect to see him in more starring roles in the near future.
Van Winkle is becoming an old hand at playing the good looking jerk, and his role is reminiscent of Rob Lowe’s bad boy character in “Tommy Boy.” Look for him to play another attractive chump in next summer’s “Transformers.”

“Accepted” truly does have heart and plenty of laughs. The climactic scene featuring the necessary inspirational speech by the unexpected leader (Bartleby) even managed to bring me to the edge of tears. While I didn’t actually cry, it did surprise me that a comedy about rejects could bring about that kind of emotion in me. “Accepted” is not what I had expected going in, and that is a good thing.

Rated PG-13 for language, sexual material and drug content, it’s a film for the slightly more mature crowd. It’s a nice lighthearted film to wind down your summer. As one critic said “It’s funnier than is has any right to be.”

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