Starring: Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Nat Wolff
Portia (Fey) is an admissions officer for Princeton
University and has a job of travelling to different schools to speak to the
students about enrolling at Princeton. With her marriage falling apart and in
the running to replace her retiring boss (Wallace Shawn), Portia receives a
call to visit an obscure, newly-founded and progressive school in the middle-of-nowhere,
ran by John Pressman (Rudd). Whilst visiting the school, she meets Jeremiah
(Wolff/Zachary Unger), a prodigiously intelligent young man who may be the
focal point of a life-changing revelation for Portia.
Admission is a romantic-comedy and it has many of the same
trappings of countless generic and bland, romantic-comedies, but within the
film are some noticeable strengths. At the forefront is impressive cast headed
by Tina Fey and Paul Rudd; two stars that both lend the familiar attractiveness
to fluffy rom-coms, but are also likably realistic and flawed. Tina Fey is in particularly
fine form here, providing both comedic and dramatic elements in impressively
balanced fashion. The film also boasts some great supporting players such as Wallace
Shawn, Michael Sheen and Lily Tomlin. The film also juggles some rather
ambitious themes, often putting the romantic elements of the plot into the
background, but handles them well. On the other hand, the film really should be
funnier than it is. Whilst the film is often amusing, it’s never hilarious and
occasionally the film stoops to low-brow humour that it really doesn’t need to
descend to and whilst Fey and Rudd avoid being perfect characters living
perfect lives, sometimes the screenplay makes them too flawed, pushing them
into firmly disapproving territory. Charming, sweet and at times rather moving,
Admission is not a perfect comedy, or really a great one, but it knows where
its strengths are and largely plays to them.
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