Here’s what I expected from Accepted: a juvenile slacker teenager doesn’t make it into college, an unbelievable gimmick comedy about how the kid makes up his own college, a bunch of colourful sitcom characters who are closer to caricature than real people, a predictable moment in which the truth will be revealed, and some dumb comedy along the way. That is, in one way or another, exactly what I got. What I wasn’t expecting was to get a little bit more.

Grade 12 is the worst year of high school. Not only must you strive to achieve the best marks, but also, thrust upon oneself is the added pressure of making important life decisions. What do you want to be, and what school will you attend to become it? Of course in 2006 we live in a post secondary society, where college and university is a must in order to make anything of oneself. Soon you’ll need your Masters in business just to manage a McDonalds. Parents aren’t any help either, they don’t seem to understand love or passion, only success; and if you aren’t in English, Science or Business, you probably won’t succeed. Thanks guys.

This is an unavoidable social reality that permeates the underbelly of Accepted, an uncharacteristically smart and enjoyable new comedy from Steve Pink, the writer of High Fidelity. It’s about a likeable goof named Bartleby Gains, or B for short, who is denied acceptance to all of the eight colleges he applies to. Rejected and a disappointment to his parents, B does the only thing he can think of: create his own college: the South Harmon Institute of Technology, a sister school to the respectable Harmon College.

This is all fine and dandy, although no one seems to notice that a new school has been made out of the old abandoned mental institution down the block from the real school. B gets his best friend Schrader to create a website, which boasts, “Acceptance is just a click away.” He even hires a fake dean played by the scene stealing Lewis Black. Even though Black’s character is a borderline insane, alcoholic, cynic, there is a lot of truth in his rants against the nature of institution. “We throw a lot of fancy words in front of these kids in order to attract them to going to school in the belief that they’re gonna have a better life, and we know that all we’re doing is breeding a whole new generation of buyers and sellers.”            

To his amazement, acceptance really was just a click away, as hundreds of college rejectees show up at South Harmon’s front door, proud to have been accepted anywhere. This creates a chain reaction of ruckus-filled insanity: what will B do, how can they keep South Harmon’s dirty little secret a dirty little secret, what will he do when all of these people find out that their one shot at education is a sham?

Forget such petty details; the plot of Accepted is nonsense. However, throughout the film, I was constantly reminded of a cartoon a friend sent me of two dogs. One of the dogs is saying something along the lines of “It’s always sit, stay, roll over, never think, innovate, be yourself.” This is the very essence of Accepted’s success, which is entertaining and forgettable as a comedy, but finds many small truths about the world of education along the way.

The simple fact is that we the students serve colleges as much as they serve us, forcing classes upon people, which don’t serve their educational needs. I remember being told that in order to major in film studies at The University of Western Ontario I would need to take a first year science course. Is this because I would need science to better my understanding of film or to keep program enrollment up for funding purposes?

In a way post-secondary education is just a method for segregating the good sheep from the bad. Yet are those who can’t afford this option or whose marks aren’t high enough, considered to be of lesser worth within society? In one of the film’s most harshly truthful scenes the dean of Harmon tells a student that a school’s excellence is not based on how many people it lets in, but how many it keeps out. This is not the ideology of an institute that works for the common good of society; it’s one that works for the common good of those who can afford it.

Schools may prepare students for a world of work, but a diploma does not guarantee employment. Passion is the main drive for success, and that’s exactly what South Harmon teaches. Although it is a far cry to believe that schools should be as ruckus and carefree as South Harmon, those are the people who will perform the greatest in the work field. They are the ones with the drive to do what they love.

At the end of the day, Accepted is a teen comedy with many insights not usually found in the genre. If it’s not a great film it’s because it deals just as much in fluff as it does social commentary, but you know what? The summer of 2006 saw many comedies which were 100% nonsense from front to back like Little Man, You, Me, and Dupree, and Beerfest just to name a few. Accepted is only 50% nonsense: not bad.