Film: Admission

Director: Paul Weitz
Genre: Comedy
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Video On-Demand
Grade: B

Perhaps because I work in a private school and spend a lot of time thinking about (and writing recommends for) college admissions, but I ended up really enjoying this Tina Fey/Paul Rudd romantic comedy. Tina Fey plays uptight pretty well, though she seems a little bit flat as a character, and Paul Rudd specializes in playing guys who are comfortable in their own skin. His characters pretty much always roll with the flow, handle life's challenges with only minor inconvenience, and wear a sardonic smile the whole time. It makes him pretty easy to like, but I also like it when that comfort and assurance is revealed to be only a facade for someone trying to get by just like the rest of us. I think that's what makes him work here. 

The film has a few gimmicks it really doesn't need--when Fey reads applications to Princeton in her role as an admissions counselor, she "sees" the student in front of her pleading their case, and then watches with guilt as many of them are dropped down a trap door due to her (or others') rejection. It's silly and overly complicates the process--we already get that tons of great kids are turned away from college, we don't need to be hit over the head with it. Similarly, the film is just a little too insistent on dealing with themes of parenthood, giving us all kinds of dumb parents who don't realize they're living for themselves and not their children, and not really spending any time on the one set of parents who it implies are doing just the opposite. It's makes the film kind of lopsided, as I would have liked to get to see a few more "types" of parents in the film.

Still, it's not as bad as the reviews indicated. Yes Fey's climactic "choice" is kind of dumb and undercuts some of the film's message, and yes Rudd's "school" seems to be full of perfectly brilliant students doing perfectly amazing things in a way that is just a little too idealized, but there is plenty to enjoy here, and there are some good laughs as well. It may not be eminently memorable, but Chris Weitz already made his memorable movie (also, interestingly, about parents and learning to live for others): it's called About a Boy. That is clearly a better film, but Admission isn't a waste of time. It's just not ground-breaking.