The Movie Review - Accepted

Accepted

The movie Accepted is a comedy based film written by Mark Perez and directed by Steve Pink. The story follows Bartleby Gaines "B" for short (Justin Long) a recent high school graduate who has not been accepted into any of the colleges that he has applied for. When at first he fails to convince his parents that it is "Fiscally irresponsible" for him to attend a college, a devious epiphany arises in his mind. He decides to fool his parents that he got accepted into a college that does not exist (The South Harmon Institute of Technology). He soon finds out however a letter of acceptance and a website was not going to be enough to fool his parents. So he solicits some help from his friends Rory (Maria Thayer), Hands (Columbus Short), and Schrader (Jonah Hill) to turn an old abandoned mental hospital into a faux college campus. Upon completion of this task however a problem arises when they find out that Schrader has made the website fully functional and new students start arriving to South Harmon. Realizing that B cannot bring himself to tell all of the new students the truth he makes the decision to try and make South Harmon an actual college. From there the movie follows B and his friends attempting to make South Harmon a real college and challenges the current stipulations as to what it really means to be educated and how "real" colleges function.

Aristotle believed that there were three kinds of appeal that a story can have to try to persuade the audience. Ethos which uses credibility or ethical appeal to convince the audience of the character of the author. Logos uses a logical and rational means persuading by the use of reasoning. And Pathos which appeals to the emotions of the audience to get them to change their minds. While all three types of appeal are present in this movie, the one which is used most often, used best, and is present at the most pivotal moments in the film is Pathos.

The first big example of pathos is the scene where B is about to give his speech about why everyone had to go home. Before he got the chance to really start speaking a student stands up and yelled at B "When I got accepted to the South Harmon Institute of Technology it' s the first time my parents ever said they were proud of me". This made B change his mind at the last minute and instead of telling everyone that they needed to leave he gives a very inspirational speech which he talks about how everyone should be accepted and trash talks the larger schools that turned them all down. At the end of which everyone stands up and cheers for B and for South Harmon. This is pathos because there was a lot of emotion behind his words. Also there were no statistics or complete use of proper grammar or language that is more common to logos and ethos.

Then there are the smaller scenes in the middle of the movie where B is tries and succeeds in convincing his friends to become teachers and to make their own courses. During these it is B again who is trying to appeal to the emotions to