Review of Admission (2013) by Alex R — 28 Mar 2013

You wanna love a movie that stars Paul Rudd and Tina Fey, but Admission is not that movie. It's so light it practically evaporates. It has no kick to it and, unfortunately, director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) assembles a way pverqualified cast to bring this bore of a script to life. Fey is Portia Nathan, a Princeton admissions officer whose job is to choose only the best. Nothing gets past her, even though she's oblivious to the fact that Mark (Michael Sheen) the professor she's shacking up with, is cheating on her.

While on a tour of schools in New England Portia runs into John Pressman (Rudd), a teacher and former college classmate. He tells her his student Jeremiah Balakian (Nat Wolff), an autodidact with terrible grades, may be connected to her past. I'll reveal nothing but it's not hard to guess.

The rest of the movie comes down to whether Portia may bend the rules for this gifted kid, and will she get it on with John and reconcile with her estranged mother Susannah (Lilly Tomlin), and will she be able to replace retiring dean of admissions Clarence (Wallace Shawn)?

I never mustered up the strength to care. Admission is a waste of good talent, and a tepid adaptation of Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel, adapted with no sense of bit by Karen Croner. It's so rom-com-y it'd make you want to puke.