Admission

This one sneaked past us while it was in the theaters, but it feels like a “stay home with a big bowl of popcorn” kind of movie anyway. It’s basically a pleasant flick in search of a genre. It’s not really a comedy or a romance or a romcom or anything else. It has a good cast, but there is no chemistry between the two leads, Paul Rudd and Tina Fey. And even though the characters are likeable, they are not given a whole lot to do. Perhaps the problem lies with the setting, the Admissions Office at Princeton University, not the first place you think of for hilarity and romance.

The gist of the movie is that Portia Nathan (Fey) is a career admissions officer looking to move up in her job, and in order to distinguish herself she’s searching for an academic star, which brings her to an alternative high school where she meets John Pressman (Rudd) and his genius student Jeremiah who just might be the child Portia gave up for adoption 18 years ago. Along the way to the admissions board, Portia and John have a bit of a fling and she plays fast and loose with the rules to get Jeremiah admitted to Princeton. And alongside the semi-romance storyline is a thread with Portia’s Mom, played by the always wonderful Lily Tomlin, as an old feminist academic who we are led to believe made her daughter afraid of being a mother.

It is sad that with this cast, director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) could not have come up with a more romantic comedy. It’s not a bad movie, it is just one of those that should have been a lot better, but couldn’t figure out where it wanted to go. Wait for it to come to HBO or see it on a plane.