Top 5 Horror Films

When I chose the films to be in the all time Top Five horror film list, I really had to think about which films are both cinematically good, and which ones left an impression on the on the art of the genre. There were plenty others I could have chosen, both modern and classic, but I feel these were the ones that really defined the genre as a whole, and their respective sub-genres. They don’t get much better than these five.

1) Night of the Living Dead (1968)

George A. Romero marked the start of his 40 year long zombie legacy with a film about survival and sheer terror. The cultural significance of “Night of the Living Dead” far out shadows anything any other film could do. The casting of Jones, an African American, in the role of Ben, the hero, sparked a controversy like no other, as a black hero for a cast of (primarily female) whites was unheard of at the time. It’s unrelenting in the scares department and the lasting impact it made on the horror genre is undeniable.

2) Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (a Symphony of Horrors) (1922)

It’s amazing that the film has survived to this day, as every copy was ordered destroyed by Bram Stoker’s estate, as “Dracula” had yet to fall into public domain, and “Nosferatu” violated copyright laws. Luckily for us, a few prints survived, and have been restored for us to enjoy on DVD and television. The most powerful image that comes from this film is the shadow of Count Orlok creeping up a staircase. That, for me, is horror, the impending doom that the shadow signifies.

3) Jaws (1975)

“Jaws” succeeds by appeasing to a very real fear people have. Deep water is real. Great white sharks that are 25 feet long are real. People are scared of these things, and Steven Spielberg knew exactly how to play to these fears. You don’t see the shark in full until the third act, but the fear is still there. The opening shot of Susan Backlinie being dragged back and forth across the screen by an unknown terror haunts the dreams of swimmers to this day. And then when you finally see the shark, when it’s too late, creeping up on Chief Brody as he’s tossing chum into the ocean it’s this moment of shock that makes you utter words unprintable here.

4) Scream (1996)

It’s one of the smartest horror films to date, by skewering the tired clichés that had been used in countless teen slasher flicks. It stayed serious, but never too serious, never exuding the “wink and nudge” philosophy of the standard parody. Billy Loomis is one of the creepiest villains of the slasher genre, darkly twisted and disillusioned with the real world. And he works on a different level than Freddy or Jason, because he is a real person that exists in the real world.

5) Saw (2004)

It plays to a sick, twisted, demented part of our minds that revels in the torture of others. A dark corner that we refuse to acknowledge, but readily exists in all of us. It’s a more serious and frightening version of “Jackass”. And Jigsaw is the cinematic parable of everyone’s God complex; deciding the fate of others, sitting on high, judging those around. It’s a perfect allegory for people’s hidden desires that they refuse to admit to, but get to revel in for an hour and a half in a dark movie theatre surrounded by people thinking the same thing they are.

The Departed

5 Stars

Martin Scorsese’s new crime drama “The Departed” cements the Irish mob’s takeover of the crime entertainment monopoly from the Italian mafia. With Jack Nicholson at his best since 1992 and Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio giving the performances of their careers, it’s hard to deny the sheer power exuded on screen by these three fine actors.

Frank Costello (Nicholson) is Boston’s top crime boss. The Special Investigations Unit of the Massachusetts State Police in Boston has been assigned to take him down. Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) is sent deep undercover to gather all the information he can on Costello and his organization. The only people who know of his true identity are his two supervisors. Costello meanwhile has planted a mole, Colin Sullivan (Damon), inside the SIU to keep him one step ahead of the law. But being so entrenched in the lies and deception is beginning to take its toll on the two young men.

This is Scorsese’s best film since 1990’s “Goodfellas”. There’s always been a brutality to his films, and in his nearly 40 year career as a director, it doesn’t get any more violent than his saga of two undercover agents on the opposite sides of the law. What’s even more intriguing about all the violence and bloodshed is that quite a bit of it isn’t shown on camera. Costello walks out from the backroom of a bar drenched in blood, obviously having just done some serious dirty work. It keeps the air of mystery about Costello going around. You don’t know what he did, but you know it was big, bad and dirty.

Noted Russian author and playwright Anton Chekov once said that if they see a gun onstage in the first act, the audience will expect it to go off by the third. This emphasizes an attention to detail that Scorsese utilizes to make everything in his entire world, the one he created for his movie, to be expertly planned out. From the café Costigan fights the mafia in to the FBI guy sitting in on the SIU meeting. Everything means something. It makes for a much more engrossing, multi-layered film.

I could go on and on about Jack Nicholson. But come on, it’s Jack Nicholson. How do you think he did? The three people that really warrant the most praise are younger actors Damon, DiCaprio and Vera Farmiga, who plays the love interest of both Costigan and Sullivan. They steal the spotlight from consummate and seasoned veterans Nicholson, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin. Pay particularly close attention to DiCaprio. He’s fully shed that pin-up boyish look from the late 90’s and has this brooding, angsty maturity as Costigan that brings his tortured character to life.

One could argue that this just adds to the deterioration of American society. That it’s a glorification of violence and crime. With criminals being seen as idols to be worshipped while cops should be seen as oppressors. But looking at the cadre of violent and crime worshipping movies that have come out in the past 20 years, this one would hardly register. It’s the most entertaining film of the year, and one the best. It’s definitely one to watch come awards season.

Little Miss Sunshine

4.5 Stars

“Little Miss Sunshine” is billed primarily as a comedic film, which does a disservice to the more dramatic aspects of Michael Arndt’s brilliant script. And it takes the combined acting talents of Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Steve Carell and young actors Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin to make this film one of the funniest and most heart breaking films of the year.

After the standing beauty queen has to step down and not compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, seven year old runner-up Olive Hoover (Breslin) is asked to take her place. She has to get from Albuquerque, NM to Redondo, Calif. in order to compete. Her struggling self-proclaimed self-help guru father (Kinnear) drives their broken down VW bus with his wife (Collette), heroin snorting father (Arkin), suicidal, gay brother-in-law (Carell) and voluntarily silent step-son (Dano) in tow to get Olive to the pageant.

It really says something when the most powerful and engaging performance in a film littered with such highly respected actors came from the 23 year old unknown Dano. And he had no lines till the last half hour. Dano’s Dwayne Hoover embarked on a vow of silence till he was accepted into the Air Force flight training program, and at the time of the movie, he’s been going for nine months. He’s able to emote so much with just his facial and body expressions, and his little notebook. And then he just breaks your heart. It’s so incredibly moving. I almost cried.

But beyond the praise due to Dano, the whole cast worked together to construct a family that is forced to grow together during the 800 mile trip. And they all do. Kinnear shows us his tremendous range as an actor in one of his finest performances of his career, and the tremendously underrated Collette gets to showcase the talent that few of us have known for the past few years. But Carell, above them all, is worthy of praise. His career is following the same path of Jim Carrey, and I can only hope he’s more lucky with the Oscar voters than Carrey has been.

Arndt was able to resurrect a dying sub-genre of comedy, throw in some drama and score a hit with his first script. He constructed his script in a way that it was equal parts emotionally moving, uproariously funny and adorably heartwarming. It can do all of that in a span of 20 minutes. And luckily, he was able to pull that off, where as several before him failed.

It’s one of those films that is like a jigsaw puzzle. It only works because every aspect fits together. The writing works because of the fusion of drama and comedy, the acting works because the characters were the right ones for the actors to portray, and vice versa, the directing works because they had so much to work with. To have this film done any other way, but any other person or group of people just wouldn’t have worked. The coming together of all the pieces is what made this great.

From the actors to the writer, the film is littered with impressive rookie performances. But none more impressive than the feature film debut of Grammy winning husband-wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. They cut their teeth on music videos back in the early 90’s when it actually meant something, and have patterned their transformation into the cinematic world after such new wave auteurs as Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. If they don’t fall into the Academy’s good graces with “Little Miss Sunshine”, they will eventually, I’m sure of it.

I must fault production designer Kalina Ivanov for perpetuating the annoying trend of making the time setting ambiguous by mixing modern technology and culture with archaic and anachronistic set dressings and costumes. It was funny in “Napoleon Dynamite” (barely) and two years later it’s just sad.

Jackass Number 2

4 Stars

What a sad, depraved culture we live in. Man fishing. Fart masks. A puppet show, using the male’s fifth appendage as the puppet. But it’s just so funny.

This is normally the point in a movie review where a plot outline is given. But “Jackass Number 2” is without plot. Anyone familiar with the show and two subsequent films would know that there is no plot. It’s a series of hilariously painful, disgusting and grotesque stunts strung together. It’s not fiction. I don’t even know what to classify it as, because it’s not a documentary either. It just is. And what it is is funny.

I have this theory that the “Jackass” saga is in actuality the most brilliant concept known to the entertainment business. Since the invention of film, people have locked to the cinema, truly all forms of art, as a form of escapism. They watch the films on the screen as a departure from the daily drudgery of life, fantasizing that they’re Humphrey Bogart saying good-bye to a one time love in “Casablanca” or they’re Superman, zipping around Metropolis, saving lives. And the crux of my theory is that everyone wants to do stupid stuff. Every person has a secret desire to pull one stupid, insane stunt. I guarantee it. I’m not saying they should, in fact I warn against. But everyone has that desire to. And “Jackass” plays on that desire.

Relentlessly it plays on it. The viewer will run a full range of emotions. From laughing uproariously to nearly vomiting (and for the exceptionally squeamish, they probably will vomit). The most cringe worthy, for myself anyway, was Steve-O’s beer enema. The most hilarious was Bam, who is absolutely terrified of snakes, locked in a trailer with a king cobra. And the most sobering event in the film comes from Chris Pontius after a horse milking stunt when he earnestly proclaims how ashamed he is of himself.

Judging this film on the standard criteria is just impossible to do. They aren’t acting. There’s no script. Mise en scène is the last thing on director Jeff Tremaine’s mind when he’s trying to capture the running of the bulls. It’s shot documentary style. It really comes down to whether or not one can stomach and get joy out of watching a group of masochists cause intentional harm to themselves.

“Jackass” documenter Tremaine was able to consistently make us laugh. And he new exactly what direction to take the film in order to keep us guessing, and keep us right on the edge of our seats. The film started off tame (by “Jackass” standards, for whatever that’s worth), and as the film progressed, so did the extreme nature of the stunts. They would get progressively physical, progressively cringe worthy, progressively hilarious.

I there isn’t anything inherently wrong. It’s just good, wholesome fun. Minus the wholesome. Don’t take the family. Finish the popcorn early in case you need a basin in which to… do what some people have done after watching a stunt. Only see this if you can handle it. They put warnings at the start and end for a reason.

Crank

Non-stop action fused with comedy highlight the new Jason Statham vehicle, Crank, which gets your adrenaline pumping till you want to explode. It’s an interesting and totally unique concept. But why was I experiencing deja-vu?

Chev Chelios (Statham) is a hit man who has just been hit with a slow acting poison known as the Beijing cocktail, which blocks the adrenal glands, effectively cutting off your natural resting supply of adrenaline. In order stay alive and exact his vengeance upon the Latino crime lords who sentenced him to death, Chelios has to stay moving to pump out abnormal amounts of adrenaline, and goes so far as to overdose on epinephrine (artificial adrenaline) and get a full defibrillator shock to the heart.

It’s an action film in the purest sense of the term. It fills all 83 minutes of its unusually short run time with action that never stops, which works in favor of rookie writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. In fact, I don’t even mind the short runtime, because any more of all that running and fighting would have been just too much to handle, even for hardcore adrenaline junkies.

Jason Statham has this natural talent of portraying this big, tough, intimidating man that you wouldn’t want to cross, and then he cracks a joke without cracking a smile which makes him seem much more down to earth, though still intimidating. And that type of energy was brought to the whole production. It’s a big tough action film from start to finish, but jokes around without dropping the overall serious tone, keeping the audience reminded that no matter what, he’s going to die.

And the ending isn’t the real payoff of the film. In recent years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on the surprise or shock twist ending of a film that will leave you asking “what the hell?’ (thanks to The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects). But for Crank, it’s the journey to the end that makes the movie satisfying. It’s like a rollercoaster. You laugh and scream the whole way through, not just at the end when you come into the unloading platform.

While this was Statham’s film, it wouldn’t have worked as well without the great supporting cast around him. Amy Smart takes what could have been a throwaway role of Chelios’ girlfriend, but turned into an impressive performance, keeping up with Statham’s humour. And you can’t help but recognize and acknowledge the talent of perennial scene stealer Efren Ramirez (Napoleon Dynamite).

But while it is a genuinely enjoyable film, I can’t help but think I’ve seen this before. Neveldine and Taylor seemed to have taken a cue from former Statham collaborator Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino before him on the visual style. Hype-noir action/comedies that aren’t made by Ritchie or Tarantino have the misfortune of being compared against the films of the British auteur and his American predecessor. They each set/matched the standard of which all films of the genre are going to be compared for a long time to come. Whether or not it’s justified in this case, too much suggests direct influence to not warrant the comparison. It’s that, or it just seems like Speed, only in a person instead of a bus.

Beerfest

The Broken Lizard comedy troupe has had an on-again-off-again love affair with fans and critics alike. They broke into the mainstream with their uproariously funny Super Troopers in 2001, followed by the disappointing Club Dread in 2004. And in order to get their recent hilarious offering, Beerfest, made, they had to pay penance with 2005’s mostly horrible Dukes of Hazzard. But luckily, they made us fall back in love with them with the new flick, and it’s a true return to form for them.

In Beerfest, brothers Jan and Todd Wolfhouse (BL’s Paul Sotor and Erik Stolhanske) travel from their home in Colorado to Munich to honor their dead father’s burial wishes. There, they stumble upon a long standing sub-celebration of Oktoberfest known as Beerfest. Automatically dismissed as they belong the illegitimate bloodline of the family who sponsors the Beerfest, and because they are American, Jan and Todd decide to come back the next year, after putting together the ultimate beer drinking team. They ask college buddies Landfill, Barry and Fink (Kevin Heffernan, Jay Chandrasekhar, who also directs and Steve Lemme) to round out the team and endure 12 grueling months of beer drinking training.

What really made both Beerfest and Super Troopers work is the fraternal aspect of the comedy. No one person is a comedic island, all relying on the other four for support. That team effort has become lost as comic’s star status and egos have inflated. While the films of Steve Carell and Will Ferrell are funny, they are more about the star, with the supporting players doing just that, supporting. You rarely see a team effort in a comedy.

It’s a sophomoric film that plays to our childish humor, and never tries to go high-brow. And the attraction of these types of films is the hands down fun and enjoyment of it, without needing to think too much about the jokes.

While funny and mostly original, I did walk away with a feeling like I had seen it before. It fell into the mold of the great party flicks that came before it. Like Animal House and Bachelor Party before it, it’s raunchy and loud and bawdy. It’s entertaining, I’ll give it that. But it’s just derivative.

All the earmarks of a comedy were there. The timing of the actors was obvious, but the poor editing job did it’s best to hide that. Lucky for us, it failed. And quite frankly, who likes CG beer? Not I. If you can’t drink it, what’s the point? But when the jokes are so funny you’re rolling in the seat, you’ll hardly notice the technical flaws.

It’s good to see the raunchy comedy making a comeback. This along with Clerks II and Jackass 2 make the theatre a good place for guys to go and hang out. The comedy flick world is littered with cheesy rom-com’s for the girls and tamer fair for teens and younger. The beer and fart jokes almost went the way of the Betamax and 8-track, and were replaced by the neurotic and inexplicably relationship challenged Jennifer Aniston.

3 Stars

The Covenant

By Matthew Woodward

WC: 542

When watching the new Renny Harlin flick “The Covenant”, one has to ask themselves “Am I at a movie theatre, or did I just turn on the Saturday Night Sci-Fi Channel movie?”

Ipswitch, Mass. was founded in the 1600’s by five families who fled England because of their mystical pagan powers. The Putman’s were thought to have been killed off in during the Salem witch trials. Now, in 2006, the four male descendents of the remaining families are developing their magical powers, with the leader, Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait), reaching the full maturation of his powers on his 18^th birthday. The families formed this covenant to keep each other in check, as the powers drain the life force of those using it. The long lost heir of the Putman family comes back into town to take all the powers for himself.

I found three metaphors in the film: puberty (get the powers at 13 years old, with full maturation at 18), drugs (the powers are addicting and slowly kill you) and to a lesser extent homosexuality (“my adoptive father caught me using magic when I was 15, and we kept it quiet”). All three were obvious, yet an attempt was still made to obscure them.

The lore and mythology was presented in an un-convoluted way. It’s easy to follow and straightforward. So there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. It’s just simplistic and derivative, with nothing to really get excited about. You could almost figure it out without having even seen the movie.

Harlin seems to have taken a cue from MTV in making this film, adopting the philosophy of “Laguna Beach” that everyone in your high school just got back from a Teen People photo shoot. He must have cast models, as there isn’t a shred of acting talent in the entire young cast. At the end of the film I was wondering if I had seen a film comprised entirely of cut footage and rehearsal shots. I was left with the distinct impression that just off camera was a stagehand holding a stack of cue cards for the cast to read from.

And the camera work was straight out of the late 80’s to early 90’s music video library. Half of it looked like a schlock Ozzy Osbourne video, the other half resembled Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” This kind of filmmaking is completely unappealing. I understand that the core audience is probably 13-18 year old girls, and they most likely find that sort of filmmaking wondrous and spellbinding. Unfortunately for Harlin, and myself, 13-18 year old girls aren’t the only ones who see films. There’s a whole world of intense filmmaking techniques out there that would have made this film more enjoyable and pleasing to the eye. I know. I’ve seen it. Many have developed and mastered these techniques. But Harlin, no matter how much of a seasoned veteran he is, is making mistakes and “artistic choices” that reek of rookie director.

Not to mention the end fight scene seemed taken punch for punch from the Saruman/Gandalf fight in “Lord of the Rings” or Harry/Voldemort fight in “Harry Potter”. I could go on and on about how this reeks of un-originality: “The Craft” with dudes or “The Lost Boys” with witches.

Half a Star

The Black Dahlia

Brian De Palma has been a maestro of modern film noir. From “The Untouchables” to “L.A. Confidential”, even “Mission: Impossible” showing glimpses of noir. But with his new entry into the genre, “The Black Dahlia”, starring Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank and set in 1947 Hollywood, he misses, but just barely.

Hartnett and Eckhart play two boxer/cops assigned to the grizzly murder of Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), an aspiring actress who was found in a field carved and disemboweled. Twists, turns and sub-plots fly in the who-done-it, with the prerequisite femme fatales being Johansson as Eckhart’s loving girlfriend and Swank as an acquaintance of Short, who also happens to be the daughter of one of the more influential men in Hollywood.

It’s hard to come up with a more cohesive and in-depth plot summary for various reasons. I don’t want to give too much away. I barely understood it myself. And, by fault of De Palma or editor Bill Pankow or writer Josh Friedman, the story is so convoluted that it would take an entirely separate article to explain it. It’s an interesting story to be told, it was just told poorly. And I don’t know who to blame. It had wonderful dialogue, and when I was able to follow the plot, I could. There was nothing too inherently wrong with the editing as it was. Nice even cuts and it flowed nicely. I can’t think of a better modern director to handle this type of film. But it was one, or all of those, which contributed to the downfall of what could have been a fantastic film, a true breakout for Hartnett. I just can’t figure out who to blame for the poor storytelling. All the wrong portions of the story were told, some left unresolved.

In this day and age, classic film-noir style walks the very fine line of parody and sincerity. And “Dahlia” went back and forth. Eckhart’s Det. Blanchard seemed almost a goofy stereotype of 40’s cops, while Hartnett’s Det. Bleichert was as hard nosed as they come, challenging Humphrey Bogart for noir supremacy. The entire cast, really, handled the somewhat archaic style of acting without making it seem too hokey.

The acting is top notch all the way through. Hartnett has settled quite comfortably into this style, as his past three major films (“Sin City”, “Lucky Number Slevin” and now “Dahlia” have been of this genre and its sub-genres.) He was an actor I had originally written off in the late 90’s as a pin-up boy with no real talent other than to look good onscreen. But he shows some real charm and chops on screen when playing a style. He’s one of those young actors that will come up and join the ranks of the more prominent and serious actors, and major awards are in his future, that’s my prediction anyway.

But the true center of attention of this film is the sheer visual beauty of it. Credit should go to both Hungarian cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond for paying homage to the classic noir films and Italian Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti (2005 for “The Aviator”) for accurately and beautifully rendering the look of 1947 Hollywood(land). Zsigmond used the classic tricks of the trade to his advantage, and made a compelling and stark contrast between the feminine and the masculine characters by altering the focus to be softer on the females, making them appear angelic till true motives and intentions are revealed.

Ferretti was the only one to bring the new millennium into the classically stylized film. He made it more graphic and gory than what would have been shown in ’47. I urge the weak stomached to stay away.

3.5 stars

Snakes on a Plane

Once in a great while along comes a film that is the next big “cult classic”. Snakes on a Plane is that film for this generation. But it has defied all logic of the cult classic. It had a strong following before it was even released. Scratch that - before it was even done filming.

A year ago fans caught wind of a new film with the simple and obvious title Snakes on a Plane, or SoaP as it became affectionately known as, and latched onto it to create the biggest internet sensation since 1999’s Blair Witch Project.

SoaP is about just that- snakes on a plane. FBI Agent Nelville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) has been assigned to escort surfer Sean Jones (Wolf Creek’s Nathan Phillips) from Honolulu to Los Angeles after Jones witnessed crime boss Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) murder a district attorney. In order to keep Jones from testifying, Kim orders the release of several crates full of the most poisonous snakes from around the world on Pacific Air flight 121. Agent Flynn has to keep the passengers and crew, and particularly Jones, safe from the deadly reptiles at 30,000 feet above the ocean.

Critics and non-Soapaphiles were quick to push this into the “so-bad-it’s-good” category, but I doubt their commitment to the sheer enjoyment of this film. Because that’s where it succeeds. SoaP is an unpretentious action thriller that delivers on all counts. It’s a pulse pounding thriller that keeps you guessing as to who will live and who will die (though the archetypal minor characters are there to provide us with good death scenes). The action is never over the top and always exciting. And the comedy is never displaced. It’s always funny when it intends to be, and serious when it needs to be.

One would want to question what A-list actor Jackson is doing in a presumably B-list film littered with B and C-list actors (David Koechner and Kenan Thompson of “SNL” and “ER’s” Julianna Margulies are the next most recognizable people). But Jackson is always the consummate actor, never turning down a role because work is work no matter how prestigious the gig. As an added bonus it shows he has a sense of humor. In a recent interview on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” he claimed he signed on to star after only seeing the film’s title in a trade magazine, having never seen a script.

I found no real flaws in the acting. Nothing award worthy or having a significant impact on the craft of acting, but nothing inherently wrong with it. Everyone was in top form.

Let’s give credit where credit is due- director David R. Ellis (Cellular and Final Destination 2) and screen writers John Heffernan (debut) and Sebastian Gutierrez (Gothika). As many view this film as a bad film that screams cheesy, it could have easily been handled as such. The film could have elicited more groans of annoyance than cheers of excitement. But it wasn’t. It was taken seriously enough to not take itself too seriously, and keep it tight and cheese free.

The unambiguous-ness worked in its favor as well. Last year was littered with metaphoric titles that had to be deciphered in order to understand the movie, or they had little to actually do with the main plot. But when you walk into a movie called Snakes on a Plane, you know exactly what you’re getting.

I can’t imagine a time when I had that much fun sitting in a movie theatre watching a film. There was an excited energy in the air as the crowed awaited the now iconic line- “I’ve had it with these mutha-******’ snakes on this mutha-******’ plane!” and proceeded to shout along with the screen. Part of the enjoyment of the film comes from that very collective experience, but the quality of the film is separate from the viewing experience.

4.5 stars

Accepted

Frat Pack freshman Justin Long has elevated to his own starring vehicle with the college comedy Accepted, but while his comedic skills are finely honed, anchoring his own film is something he’s just not ready for.

Having been rejected from every college he applied to and getting the “we’re very disappointed in you” lecture from his parents, Bartleby Gaines (Long) decides to placate the parental units by creating his own college, going so far as to forge an acceptance letter, create a fake (though unfortunately functional website), using his tuition money to rent an abandoned facility to make his own college, South Harmon Institute of Technology (think about the acronym it creates) and even hiring wayward former professor Ben Lewis (Lewis Black) as the dean of the fake school. It all starts to unravel when other recent high school graduates show up to S.H.I.T. after receiving acceptance letters from the website. Gaines has to keep up the appearance of a functional school so uses the tuition money from the incoming freshman to actually turn the building into a “do it yourself” type of institute of higher learning.

The usual college comedy stereotypes exist in the world of Accepted. Frat boys are cocky, preppy jerks. The dean is an uptight, greedy man with an inferiority complex. And the hot chick will learn the error of her ways and go with the nerdy guy. And they aren’t even done well. It’s carbon copy of the films that lay the ground before it. I like to think of it as a diet Animal House or a low-carb Revenge of the Nerds.

Where the movie really fails is that it puts on the façade of a complex film with a deep message, but it’s really just a simple, shallow film.

2.5 Stars