Accepted (DVD, 2006, Full Frame)

What happens when you want to go to college but no school accepts you? If you're Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long), you invent a fictitious university and create your own destiny. Playing like a PG-13 version of OLD SCHOOL, ACCEPTED follows the Ferris Bueller-esque Bartleby as he and his assembled crew of college rejects dupe the world by building the South Harmon Institute of Technology from scratch. There's his nerdy friend Sherman Schrader (Jonah Hill), who is actually enrolled in the well-established Harmon College across the way but who helps Bartleby with the logistics; the hyper-smart Rory (Maria Thayer), who put all her eggs into one basket and got rejected by her dream Ivy League school; Hands (Columbus Short), a football player who lost his scholarship when he blew out his knee; Glen (Adam Herschman), a former quickie-mart employee who is about as dumb as they come; and, finally, Uncle Ben (Lewis Black), a former academic who gets talked into become the makeshift school's dean when he gets fired from his latest job selling sneakers at the mall. What begins as an innocent ploy to make his parents happy quickly spirals out of control when Bartleby realizes that several hundred kids have shown up for orientation. As he digs himself into a deeper and more irrevocable hole, something strange happens: Bartleby realizes that he's actually on to something. Steve Pink's ACCEPTED is a lighthearted comedy that has its heart in the right place.