Now I can finally get hepatitis!

Steve Pink co-wrote the screenplays for High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank, so he's earned some points in his career already. He's also the director of Accepted, a film that's so banal and uninspired that even a soundtrack with the Pixies, Le Tigre and the Hives cannot breathe life into it.

Above all else, this film really lacks any sense of originality. The plot follows the age old 'make a lie out of desperation, watch it escalate uncontrollably, then have the "is it really that bad to lie?" speech at the end' routine. Like The School of Rock. Also, there's a stuffy academic who's trying to put the renegade heroes out of business. Like Old School. And they have to contend with preppy frat boys with a superiority complex. Ever seen Animal House? There's a scene towards the end of Accepted which is almost identical to the "Tell those assholes to shut up" scene.

Let's overlook this for some reason. The characters themselves are almost entirely unlikeable. Justin Long, an actor who I do not like, is the lead and has very little to offer other than a face that reminds me of a young David Schwimmer. Yes, handsome in an ugly sort of way. His is a dull character who initially is fast-talking and quick thinking, but quickly becomes actually quite boring. I'm no big punk purist, but if you are, you may want to avoid the film just for his assassination of Blitzkrieg Bop. His love interest makes a mid-movie switch from dating the jock nemesis, to dating our hero, who is painstakingly DIFFERENT to the jock. It's that easy. Other players kinda lack dimensions, too. There are the parents, who can only love their kid if he gets into college, the annoying younger sister, a kid with ADD whose name is also ADD, the weird hippie girl... Even Lewis Black phones in his performance. Jonah Hill gets a couple of laughs ("I hope you have hobo-stab insurance"), but they're lost in the averageness.

And another thing... according to this film, going to college (that's a real college, not, like, one that you and your buddies invented in an abandoned mental hospital using a website) is (a) sure to turn you into a zombie concerned only with grades, (b) sure to turn you into a haze-happy frat boy, (c) going to stifle your attempts at creativity, and (d) not nearly as good as going to a place where there's a class about Rocking Faces Off.

Rather than putting up a still from the movie, as I usually do, here's a picture of Feedback, the winner of Who Wants to be a Superhero?