A Low Admission
Portia Nathan (Tina Fey) has worked in admissions at Princeton University for 16 years where she prides herself on her organized way of doing things. But life throws Portia a series of curve balls; her boyfriend Mark (Michael Sheen) leaves her for another woman, she finds herself dealing with an old face from High School in John Pressman (Paul Rudd) who runs a new thinking school. But the biggest curveball is when John introduces her to Jeremiah (Nat Wolff) a gifted student who John is convinced is the child that Portia gave up as a baby and wants to reconnect them. Suddenly Portia's life which neatly fitted in to various boxes is thrown in to turmoil.
"Admission" had a big problem; it doesn't know what it wants to be. We have a cast of popular comedy actors in a movie which has less humour than you would normally find in their movies and the humour is not laugh out funny, more a case of occasionally smile worthy. And it leads you to think whether "Admission" was the right movie for comedians or would it have been better for actors more accustomed to deliver the charm of the movie. Basically it is a confused movie right from the word go.
But "Admission" has another problem, it isn't very entertaining. This whole story of Portia's life being turned upside down by the possibility of Jeremiah being her son whilst she finds herself in a relationship with John is not in the least bit interesting and because it is light on the humour front it doesn't have anything to really grab. In truth "Admission" ends up resting on the likeability of Tina Fey and Paul Rudd which thank goodness they are likeable as otherwise this would be extremely tedious.
What this all boils down to is that "Admission" didn't do it for me and it was one of those movies which probably on paper sounded like a good idea but the final product ends up a disappointment.
