COMEDY
Like Ferris Bueller before him, Bartleby (Long) has mastered all the angles. He finagled his way out of gym class by faking an allergy to sweat and once got a bully kicked out of school on sexual harassment claims. So when "B" is rejected by all eight colleges he applied to, he conjures up a faux Ohio college (South Harmon Institute of Technology, with an all-too-appropriate abbreviation)—located in an abandoned psychiatric facility—that attracts hundreds of tuition-paying fellow rejects. Long is plenty likable in his first lead role, but he's weighed down by the pedestrian direction of first-timer Steve Pink, who wrote Grosse Pointe Blank, and a script that refuses to heed its own advice about unleashing one's creativity. Instead, Accepted sticks to the usual college-comedy lesson plan: bubbly hot blondes, good; frat boys and smarmy deans, bad. (PG-13)
