The hero of "Accepted," Bartleby Gaines, appears to be your average all-American high school senior.

Neither nerd nor jock, neither stoner nor goth, Bartleby (Justin Long) lives comfortably in the middle of every demographic and foresees no problems riding his C average into college. Then graduation day

arrives, and Bartleby hasn't received a single acceptance letter. Even the safety school to his safety school rejected him.

"Maybe you're too average," suggests his bratty younger sister. Bartleby wonders if maybe he shouldn't have titled his personal goals essay "I Don't Have a Clue." An unexplored possibility is that the admissions officer saw the name Bartleby on the application and figured it was a gag.

Because he stars in a collegiate comedy drawn from the hallowed texts of "Animal House" and "Revenge of the Nerds," Bartleby's solution is suitably outrageous: He starts his own college.

Hollywood has made many attempts to revive the "slobs vs. snobs" school that dominated screen comedy from the late 1970s to mid '80s, but "Accepted" is the first to recapture the healthy sense of rebellion that

underscored the genre's classics. Anarchy has defined recent gross-out comedies ("Team America," "Freddy Got Fingered," etc.), but by trying to offend everyone, these films never threatened the establishment. If "Accepted" is a hit, it may signal a political change in the nation's youth more than any election results.

Sociological ramifications aside, "Accepted" is an agreeable comedy that wisely takes its cues from the best of its predecessors. The film it most resembles is Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School," one of the few comedies from the anti-establishment pantheon that wasn't rated R. "Accepted" has a similar PG-13 vibrancy.

"Accepted" also might make a star of Long, who is fast becoming a familiar face (he now stars in a series of Macintosh commercials). Long is a casual smart aleck who could be called another Bill Murray, except that the occasional pratfall reveals his true inspiration.

And in case younger viewers still don't get it ("Caddyshack" is ancient history to them, after all), leading lady Blake Lively fills in the blank when she spots "The Decline and Fall of Chevy Chase" among the ersatz college's class offerings.

"There's a waiting list for that one," Bartleby replies.

With the help of a few friends, Bartleby establishes the South Harmon Institute of Technology to fool their parents into believing they are attending college (the school mascot is a sandwich, in case you haven't figured out the acronym).

They made the school's Web site too convincing, though, particularly the bit about "Acceptance is just a click away." Orientation day arrives, and so do a few hundred freshmen, each bearing a $10,000 tuition check. Bartleby hires a phony dean(comedian Lewis Black) and tells the students they can study whatever they want and call it a curriculum.

The villain, naturally, is a fraternity president from the neighboring university and director Steve Pink must have scoured genetics labs to find such a perfect copy of Ted McGinley in Travis Van Winkle. Cripes, even the actor's name is preppy.

The young actors who play Long's friends are enjoyable, particularly Maria Thayer, who was the only bearable part of the "Strangers With Candy" movie.

Scarcely a moment in "Accepted" is original, but you have to cheer a film that chooses the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" as its anthem and not something by Matchbox 20. Subversiveness hasn't been this sunny since Bill Murray chanted, "It just doesn't matter," in "Meatballs."