20 Years After Its Release, "Accepted" Is Now A Certified Cult Classic

The outrageous 2006 college comedy Accepted just vaulted into Netflix’s global top 10, suggesting that despite a meager 38% Rotten Tomatoes rating, the film is finding a new audience as a belated cult classic. Starring early-career Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Blake Lively, and more, it’s fair to say the movie deserves a higher final grade.

Accepted is a glorious callback to the kind of comedy movie that had its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s. It is absurd from start to finish, but it doesn’t try to be anything more than that.

While the film qualifies as a forgotten gem for American audiences, its broad comedy clearly appeals to a new generation of international viewers.

20 Years Later, International Audiences Are Discovering This Underrated College Comedy

Accepted; Directed By Steve Pink; Starring Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Blake Lively, And More

Film poster for 2006's Accepted, starring Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Blake Lively, and more. — Film poster for 2006’s Accepted, starring Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Blake Lively, and more.

Accepted was released in late summer 2006, as a new fall college semester loomed and legions of incoming freshmen prepared to move into their dorms and start taking core curriculum classes. The movie starts by confronting a harsh reality: what does someone do if they’ve been rejected by every college they applied to?

This is Accepted’s only flirtation with realism. Because Justin Long’s main character, Bartleby, decides to make up a fake college and pretend to go. From there, the movie gets exponentially more off-the-wall, as Bartleby’s fake school unintentionally attracts a large student body, made up of rejects and underachievers like himself.

Accepted made just over $38 million dollars in theaters, on a reported $23 million budget, qualifying it as a modest box office success. However, critics at the time didn’t think much of the movie, and now, twenty years later, it holds a harsh Rotten Tomatoes score of just 38%. Still, based on Netflix’s rankings, Accepted is having a moment right now.

The movie ranked fifth out of Netflix’s top 10 for January 14, 2026. A closer look at the data reveals overseas viewers driving it up the charts after all these years. This could be the start of Accepted finally getting its due as an eminently rewatchable comedy, one that was arguably among the last of its kind.

“Accepted” Is Dinged For Being Formulaic, But Really, It Closes The Book On Its Classic Tropes

The Last Cinematic Comedy Of Its Kind

Accepted came out at the same time that director/producer Judd Apatow was spearheading a revolution in cinematic comedy. The 40-Year-Old Virgin was released the year before, in 2005, and Apatow followed that up with Knocked Up in ’07. That was also the year Accepted’s Jonah Hill solidified his star status by co-headlining Superbad.

The cynical take is that Accepted is hampered by old tropes, while Superbad and movies like it redefined what comedies looked, acted, and felt like for the 21st century. A more charitable perspective is that Accepted is the last in a lineage of films that includes Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds.

That is to say, in retrospect, Accepted’s tropes feel like features, not bugs. The villainous dean, the frat boy jerk, the band of misfits coming together to save their school. It’s a hyperbolic, mid-aughts interpretation of the classic campus comedy formula. Which seems to be why international Netflix audiences are now discovering the movie.

“Accepted” Is Being Recognized As A Cult Classic In Overseas Markets; Will U.S. Audiences Learn To Love It?

Just In Time For The Film’s 20th Anniversary

Justin Long crashing a frat party in Accepted

Accepted isn’t currently on Netflix in the U.S., and its international numbers still put it in the top five streaming titles for January 14, 2026. That suggests the movie is getting some heavy play overseas. The question now is when Accepted will be widely available to stream in the U.S. again, and whether it will replicate this spike in its viewership.

It makes sense that the movie is due for rediscovery. It is full of familiar faces. Blake Lively, Jonah Hill, and Justin Long are all household names. Lewis Black might not have the same reputation he did in the 2000s, but he’s a nostalgic presence for older viewers. Anthony Heald, best known for Silence of the Lambs, shines as the antagonistic dean.

It’s the fault of the critic, not the film, to find logical flaws in Accepted, or to deny it the suspension of disbelief required to roll with its absurdity. The movie is fun, and full of heart. It doesn’t have to be great in order to finally be acknowledged as a certified cult classic, two decades after its release.

With the 20th anniversary of the film approaching, it is due for renewed appreciation from audiences, especially those who didn’t give it a chance before. It is too much to ask for a legacy sequel, but it will be notable to see if the stars of Accepted acknowledge it as a formative part of their Hollywood career trajectories.