You’ve probably seen the videos before, viral clips of Black and brown students finding out they’ve been accepted into Ivy League schools. These heartfelt moments all came from one source, T.M. Landry, a small private college-preparatory school based in the rural city of Beaux Bridge, Louisiana, which made national headlines for its 100% success rate of getting its graduating students into college, including over 30% being accepted into elite universities. The school’s students do not come from wealthy backgrounds, with the majority of their 100+ student body come from households that make less than $32,000 a year. Also, the majority of the school is Black, which makes T.M. Landry’s unprecedented success story even more significant, since this country doesn’t have a great record of supporting Black education. It’s no wonder why any filmmaker would want to document this amazing story, and that’s what Accepted aims to do.

The face of T.M. Landry is Michael Landry, a former salesman who founded and teaches at the school alongside his wife Tracey, a former nurse. Everything about Landry—both the school and the man—is unconventional. There’s no homework, no textbooks, no class schedule, sometimes the students teach other students, and it’s based in a large warehouse. Landry likes to include motivational speeches into his classes, often coming off more like a motivational speaker or drill sergeant than a typical classroom teacher. “I am somebody,” Landry has his students chant every day. “I love you,” he has them recite back to him, in English, Mandarin, and a half dozen other languages, including his self-made “Mikenese.” And, at one point, Landry splits the class into two sides, one he considers “weak” and the other “strong.” Tears are shed, but the students still seem to enjoy the school’s unconventional environment, to the point they’re willing to study six days a week, or even willing to call Landry at 11 PM to ask about a math problem.

These students are motivated not just by the school’s towering reputation but because they understand that higher education may be the only way for them to escape the poverty they know and live. “Three of you will die before you’re 21,” Landry tells his Black students, emphasizing a statistic that the current system works against them. In addition to Landry, Accepted follows the lives of four senior T.M. Landry students: Alicia Simon, a bookworm hoping to find community in the majority-Black school after transferring from her predominantly-white one, and whose mom is battling stage 4 cancer; Adia Sabatier, who grew up poor and is raised by her grandparents after the death of both her parents; Isaac Smith, who feels the pressure of living up to his older brother, also a T.M. Landry student, who got into NYU; and Cathy Bui, a Vietnamese American hoping to become the first in her family to go to college in order to earn a better life to support her widowed mother and two disabled sisters.

What begins as a feel-good story takes a shocking and dramatic shift midway in the film after an explosive New York Times article exposes the school’s dark secrets—and we witness the impact of this news in real time with the filmmakers and the students.

Though The Times exposé was released in 2018, I’m not going to spoil the film’s twist in case any of you reading weren’t aware of what happened with T.M. Landry (like myself). The fallout from this revelation makes us reconsider scenes we saw earlier in the film. Some scenes we now interpret differently, others we discover were completely fabricated, unbeknownst to us and the filmmakers. Suddenly, this uplifting film has turned into a tragedy.

It’s a testament to director Dan Chen, in his debut feature, and his team for being able to shift gears, and even complete this film, after The Times article blew up. It was a good decision to remain focused on the students’ perspectives since they’re the most impacted by this news. The future these students worked so hard for, and that their families spent so much money on (tuition for the school costs nearly $600 a month), a future that was promised by T.M. Landry’s track record, was now in jeopardy.

In an ironic twist of fate, The Times article made Accepted into a better film. The conception of the film started with executive producer Jason Y. Lee (founder of Jubilee Media, which co-produced this film), who found the aforementioned viral clips inspirational and felt this story needed to be documented. Lee brought the idea to Dan Chen, a documentarian. The final film is better not because the twist is so jaw-dropping, but because it forces the film and the filmmakers to look at themselves and at their (and society’s) complicity in perpetuating the “model minority” myth. If Accepted had simply depicted the story of underprivileged Black and brown students working hard and earning their way into elite colleges, it would’ve been inspiring but hollow. It would have contributed to the “picking yourself up from your bootstraps” mentality. Instead, the film ends up addressing heavy themes in its third act, like racial inequity in the education system, the myth of American meritocracy and the American Dream, and the morality of gaming a system that’s already designed to be stacked against you. Just four months after the T.M. Landry scandal made headlines, an even bigger scandal broke out—Operation Varsity Blues, in which over 50 wealthy white parents (including actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, of Full House and Desperate Housewives fame, respectively) spent millions in bribes to guarantee their children’s admission into elite colleges.

Accepted asks important questions, but it doesn’t have answers to them, which some may consider to be its greatest weakness. But, again, this wasn’t the type of film it set out to be. Instead, it ends like how it started—by documenting the lives of the students in their final year at T.M. Landry before going off to college. These moments with the students, with Alicia, Adia, Isaac, and Cathy, seeing them and hearing what they think, even when it’s painful to watch, are where the film shines, because they’re the ones who ultimately matter. These students were sold a lie, but one that they—we—have no choice but to accept because there’s no other option.

3.5 out of 4 Kents.

Disclaimer: I know some of the crew involved in the making of this film due to my past experience as a Jubilee Fellow under Jubilee Media’s nonprofit arm, Jubilee Project. This relationship had no influence on my judgement of the film.

‘Accepted’ is available to stream on demand on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video, and on DVD via Kino Lorber and Amazon.

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