Plot
A Princeton admissions officer who is up for a major promotion takes a professional risk after she meets a college-bound alternative school kid who just might be the son she gave up years ago in a secret adoption.
Release Year: 2013
Rating: 5.2/10 (363 voted)
Director:Paul Weitz
Storyline
Straitlaced Princeton University admissions officer Portia Nathan (Tina Fey) is caught off-guard when she makes a recruiting visit to an alternative high school overseen by her former college classmate, the freewheeling John Pressman (Paul Rudd). Pressman has surmised that Jeremiah (Nat Wolff), his gifted yet very unconventional student, might well be the son that Portia secretly gave up for adoption many years ago. Soon, Portia finds herself bending the rules for Jeremiah, putting at risk the life she thought she always wanted -- but in the process finding her way to a surprising and exhilarating life and romance she never dreamed of having.
Filming Locations: Value Drugs, Bronxville, New York
Technical Specs
Runtime:
User Review
I admit I liked Admission.
Rating:
The amusing Admission is the first successful comedy of the year and a
reasonable look at the admission process for an elite
college--Princeton. Tina Fey as Portia and Paul Rudd as John turn in
pleasant performances as an admissions executive and a progressive
school teacher respectively. Rudd is amiable here and usually
successful in his film career, while Fey's efforts up to now have been
mediocre (Date Night, Baby Mama).
As an Alumni Admissions interviewer for over 30 years at Georgetown
University, I find much of the story ringing true from the
overachieving candidates nurtured by ambitious parents to the
underachieving but brilliant and risky individualists. Portia must
struggle with the boxed-in role of continuing the Princeton tradition
(read stereotypes) or breaking away to push for a student who calls
himself an "autodidact" with low grades but perfect scores on
achievement tests for courses he never took.
Amid the plot's fierce applicant battle for a slot, Portia and John
dance to the usual romantic formula of disliking each other to . . .
Well, you know the drill. However, it's their reactions to the
admission process that provide the authentic tension as he has
developed students with independent minds, and she is used to the
cookie-cutter candidates who lack the passion of those independents.
Director Paul Weitz knows something about family dynamics and children
with his About a Boy, In Good Company, and Little Fockers among the
more obvious examples. Signing up Lily Tomlin to play Portia's feminist
mom was inspired; like the ubiquitous aging Alan Arkin, Tomlin should
now have plenty of work.
Admission requires no small amount of sympathy for the messy business
of growing up and getting ahead—Weitz navigates the vagaries of family
ambition well. If the double-meaning of the title seems too precious to
you, don't worry, the rest of the story is almost unambiguous.
Although Admission is mostly about applicants to an upper-tier college,
it also poses the unethical means some might employ to gain entrance.
Even Portia is not blameless, a touch I found in the film's favor while
it deals with the unreal segment of our population smart enough to be
considered for admission.
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