Grandma’s Accepted

Movies touch the deepest part of our psyche , tickle our fancy, and let us escape into another world. Some of these movies become the stuff of legends, while others are thrown into obscurity, after a two-week billing on the marquee. In recent years, two such movies have suffered a cruel fate from the silver screen, “Grandma’s Boy”, and “Accepted”.

While both, “Grandma’s Boy” and “Accepted,” are not the kind of movies to touch the deepest parts of our psyche. They both reach out to the viewer and touch the heart of their matter. There is no golden idol presented on a star-studded stage, in the cards for these comedic flicks but there is a touch of rewatchability contained in their celluloid. In the year after their releases, both movies are must have in any DVD collection.

“Grandma’s Boy” is a comedy from the minds of “Happy Madison Productions”, of the Adam Sandler fame. The movie opens with the main character “Alex” evicted from his home. His roommate spent the rent on Pilipino hookers and Alex is in need of a place to stay. After his car is packed with belongings, his bong is shattered on the sidewalk, and a bathroom mishap with his best friend’s mother, Alex is left with no place to turn but his grandmother house. His grandmother enjoys a relatively peaceful life with
two roommates, who complete a trio of dysfunctional golden girls. When Alex’s video game testing work life mixes with his new home life, hilarity ensues. While “Grandma’s Boy” takes elements from time-tested comedies, there is a breath of fresh air in the movie’s presentation. Though a heavy presence of cannabis humor kept the movie from becoming an all out smash hit on the silver screen.

“Accepted” is a new submission in the college comedy genre with a twist. While most College comedies base themselves around a group of ner’do’wells who attend the college they fight, I.E. Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, and PCU, “Accepted” learns from “Old School” and takes the ner’do’wells into their own college. The movie opens with the main character, Bartleby, rejected from 8 out of the 8 colleges. With the scorn of his mother and father, Bartleby hatches a plan. He gets the help of his high school friends and creates a fictional college. “South Harmon Institute of Technology” or S.H.I.T, is born and Bartleby is accepted to his fictional college and by his parents. The plan blows up in his face, when the fake website with it’s one click enrollment, generates a school full of students who, like Bartleby, were rejected from their applied schools. Laughter and hi-jinx are the staple of this comedy and it delivers mass quantity of both, with major help from Lewis Black. Yet, there is a strong heart that lies below the jovial posture and it is all too apparent in Bartleby’s final monologue. The dick and fart jokes are in every corner but under the smiling facade is a deeper question about the educational system in this country.

If you have not had the opportunity to view either of these movies then get to your local rental retailer. These movies went unnoticed in the theaters, but the land of DVD is a lasting medium. For years to come, these movies will become hallmarks of the Zero decade. You want to see them now, before the Cable networks have a chance to censer the every living S.H.I.T. out of them.