Accepted

Entertainment Weekly recently reported that a remake of Revenge of the Nerds is in the works. Why bother? After all, do nerds really need revenge these days? Wasn’t Ross on Friends kind of nerdy? The X-Files’ Mulder even made nerds sexy, reportedly, and Drew Carey has made a career out of being a nerd — and, of course, there’s the Verizon guy. Can you hear me now?

Besides, Accepted serves as a pretty workable remake of Nerds. The nominal and transparent plot centers around underachiever Bartleby Gaines, a bright high schooler who nonetheless fails to adequately prepare himself for college. He’s rejected by all of the schools to which he applies, and in characteristic fast-talking style, Bartleby tries to convince his parents that the smart money is on getting a job, not wasting cash on tuition. When the folks don’t bite, Bartleby cons his buddies into inventing South Harmon Institute of Technology — S.H.I.T. They lease an abandoned mental hospital, clean it up, and voila! SHIT happens. Bart’s folks visit the campus stocked with hired “students,” meet the whacked-out college dean (played by The Daily Show’s Lewis Black as The Daily Show’s Lewis Black), and sign over a $10,000 check for tuition. The show is on, and when SHIT’s website starts accepting applications from every college reject in town, the school hits the fan. Bartleby’s solution? Have the students invent courses of study and classes they want to take, and teach themselves!

The love interest in the story is Monica, the most popular girl in school. She dates an obnoxious jock, and when she becomes disillusioned by the jerk, she warms to Bartleby’s fast-talking schtick.

The villain in the story is Harmon College’s Dean Richard Van Horne, an ambitious administrator who’s looking to acquire real estate for a lasting legacy at Harmon’s real college. Van Horne is played by the ubiquitous Anthony Heald, an actor who has made a career out of playing villains. Remember how, in Silence of the Lambs, he was actually more villainous than Hannibal Lecter? Remember how audiences cheered when Lecter called Agent Starling and told her he was off to have Dr. Chilton for dinner?

With a villain so blandly dislikable, and with Bartleby’s heroics so mindlessly credible — the staffless school faces down the Board of Education — why wouldn’t we want to celebrate the triumph of South Harmon’s SHIT-heads, just as they celebrate themselves? Why wouldn’t we want to celebrate a scholastic version of Switchfoot’s “Beautiful Letdown,” a college of “dropouts, losers, failures, and fools”? After all, isn’t this a noble depiction of God’s grace, a vision of a world in which the first are made last, and the last first? Doesn’t director Steve Pink give us a comedic, college-age spin on what the Kingdom of God looks like?

No. First-time director Pink just gives us a passably-made yawner that finds as many excuses as possible to field the acronym SHIT — as if that’s the absolute pinnacle of sophomoric humor. Personally, I’d have been thrilled if Hannibal Lecter had come along and chased down not only Dean Van Horne but every one of these nitwits — Bartleby Gaines included.

So what’s the problem? Why doesn’t the formula work for Pink?

A look at the director’s resume gives us an answer. He’s been busy in Hollywood ever since 1985’s The Sure Thing, directed by Rob Reiner and starring John Cusack. Presumably, that’s where he met Cusack, and he’s been more-or-less following him around ever since, working on other Cusack projects such as Bob Roberts, Grosse Point Blank, High Fidelity, The Jack Bull, and America’s Sweethearts.

The problem is that Accepted is designed as a John Cusack vehicle — only Cusack is now too old to play the central role, and the spirit of the film is locked into a certain 1980’s John Hughes mentality.

Would a young Cusack and a release date of, say, August 1992 have saved Accepted?

Probably. But Justin Long, who stands in for Cusack as Bartleby, is no John Cusack. He’s more like a young Miguel Ferrer. And if you’re saying, “Who?”, that’s just the point.

Long is not up to the task, and 2006 is no time for an 80’s Cusack comedy.