Movie Review: "Admission" (2013)

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Movie: "Admission"
Director: Paul Weitz
Year: 2013
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Portia (Tina Fey), a career driven admissions officer at Princeton, travels around the country to convince college-bound students why Princeton is the college for them. Portia is happy with her life, her job, her boyfriend, and her childless existence. After stumbling upon a special progressive alternative-school, Portia meets John (Paul Rudd), a teacher there, and is pulled aside and asked if a particular student named Jeremiah has a shot at going to Princeton. Though his grades are terrible, he scored off the charts on all of his standardized tests. After hemming and hawing, Portia leaves the school and returns to Princeton, where it turns out her long term live-in boyfriend Mark (Michael Sheen) has had an affair with an English professor and has gotten her pregnant. He leaves her in the middle of a party they are throwing. A few days later, John and Jeremiah show up at Princeton and ask to take a tour. After a brief sexual encounter, John tells Portia that Jeremiah could be the son she gave up for adoption while she was in college, unbeknownst to her feminist mother. Finding out this information, Portia is willing to do whatever it takes to give Jeremiah a chance at Princeton, despite all the odds against her and him.

For a cast that boasts typically good comedians, this movie falls flat. You're not really invest in any relationship other than the one between Portia and Jeremiah. The film consists of one awkward scene after the next that dredges along at a snail's pace, leaving audiences more bored than entertained. The comedic moments are few and far between. The "tug at your heart strings" moments don't do so at all.

The one question I had running through my mind the entire time is why would Portia reduce herself so much that she stayed with a guy who was such a dick to her, and why would she continue to see her mother after she was so terrible to her? It doesn't make sense, drop the dead weight already! There's not really much to say about this movie, it's just not that great. It will join the thousands of other mediocre movies in the pile of forgotten cinema soon enough.

My Rating: 4/10
BigJ's Rating: 4/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 38%
Do we recommend this movie: No.