Wednesday, November 29, 2006
ACCEPTED
In contrast to Cars, Accepted is promoted as a mindless escape film; yet, in some ways, it is more intellectually sophisticated. The film is fundamentally pro education, and for doing your best to do a good job, and for being tolerant of each person's needs. Its basic theme is that education works when people can study what they are really interested in. Some slackers are really geniuses who are not getting the right education.
(Now, of course, that's only part of the story. There are a lot of things more people should know a lot about whether they think they like it or not. Just for starters, Americans are woefully ignorant of the rest of the world, and -- assuming Jay Walking is for real -- they're woefully ignorant of this country and everything else, too. So, another part of the story is to make education more interesting.)
Back to the film. The male lead, Justin Long, (best known for playing the MAC on the MAC vs PC TV ads) is very good.
On the other hand, the bad-guys -- the buttoned down Deans and frat guys -- are too cliched; and -- after a great setup -- the plot is the usual predictable stuff.
All in all, it's not a classic comedy, but it's pretty funny and I enjoyed it.
