Funrahi Movie Reviews

Admission

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 1 hour 57 minutes (117 minutes)

Rated PG-13 for language and some sexual material.

Genre: Comedy

You'll

Be

Glad

You

Enrolled.

3 out of 5

Admission Review

What's Good:
Natural, unforced chemistry between Rudd and Fey.
What's Bad:
Short on the CRAZY and RISKY scale.
Verdict:
This film has its moments, but ends up garnering easy laughs... a typical rom-com flick.
Watch or Not:
Watch it if love Rudd-Fey pair.....you'll be glad you enrolled.

Audience Ratings for Admission

57.0%
128 Ratings
1 2 3 4 5
hate it don't like it it's ok it's good it's great

Plot Summary

Tina Fey (Date Night, 30 Rock) and Paul Rudd (I Love You Man, Knocked Up) star in Admission, the new film directed by Academy Award nominee Paul Weitz (About a Boy), about the surprising detours we encounter on the road to happiness. Straight-laced Princeton University admissions officer Portia Nathan (Fey) is caught off-guard when she makes a recruiting visit to an alternative high school overseen by her former college classmate, the free-wheeling John Pressman (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.

Critics Reviews for Admission

31 Critics like this movie.
Reviews Counted: 36 | Positive Review: 11 | Negative Review: 25 | Average Rating: 3/5

What is most distressing about Admission is that it serves as further evidence that Tina Fey, despite her dominance of the small screen, has not yet mastered the big one.

March 22, 2013 Full Review
Christopher Orr
Christopher Orr
The Atlantic

This is certainly an interesting idea, though the movie is badly handicapped by Fey, who must venture beyond her usual snippiness into scenes of genuine poignancy and proves unequal to the task.

March 22, 2013 Full Review
J. R. Jones
J. R. Jones
Chicago Reader

Granted, this is not automatic laugh-riot material, nor should it be, but didn't Fey recognize how hackneyed it all is?
Critic Score: C-

March 22, 2013 Full Review
Peter Rainer
Peter Rainer
Christian Science Monitor

If Fey ends up making movies as good as this one over the next few years, television's loss will have been cinema's gain, for real.
Critic Score: 4/5

March 22, 2013 Full Review
Glenn Kenny
Glenn Kenny
MSN Movies

You'll be glad you enrolled.
Critic Score: 3/4

March 22, 2013 Full Review
Stephen Whitty
Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger

This would be a good movie for a parent to watch with a high-school-age child facing down the college admissions slog-it's mildly snarky but resolutely uncynical.

March 22, 2013 Full Review
Dana Stevens
Dana Stevens
Slate

Some films are electric - Admission settles for alternating current.
Critic Score: 3/4

March 22, 2013 Full Review
Rick Groen
Globe and Mail

When in doubt, ma'am, just ask yourself: What would Tina Fey do?
Critic Score: B

March 22, 2013 Full Review
Tom Long
Tom Long
Detroit News

In their central roles, Rudd and Fey have a natural, unforced chemistry. John and Portia are cute as buttons, but they're also goofy, confused and flawed people.
Critic Score: 3/4

March 22, 2013 Full Review
Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post

Only Mr. Rudd emerges unscathed. He protects himself by being consistently affable in the face of heavy odds.

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Joe Morgenstern
Joe Morgenstern
Wall Street Journal

Everybody in "Admission" is funny - Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn - but they're not funny in "Admission."
Critic Score: 2/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle

While most college-themed comedies aim for low-SAT yucks, "Admission" tosses out jokes and cultural references that aim higher.
Critic Score: 3/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Colin Covert
Colin Covert
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Admission settles for skin deep.

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Ella Taylor
NPR

A genial, predictable and ultimately forgettable romantic comedy.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Claudia Puig
Claudia Puig
USA Today

Cheerful, skittish entertainment that never takes its subject seriously enough.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Ty Burr
Ty Burr
Boston Globe

Fey and Rudd achieve a couple of comedy mindmelds ... but they're fleeting, as Admission's outlandish contrivances continue to get in the way.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Steven Rea
Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer

Infused with an almost relentless blandness, it's defined by soft comedy (a few laughs here and there), flaccid drama, and likeable actors.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
ReelViews

You could call it a dramedy, I guess, but that manufactured term suggests a blending of the two elements. Here they exist almost as separate genres squeezed into the same movie.
Critic Score: 2.5/5

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Bill Goodykoontz
Bill Goodykoontz
Arizona Republic

[Fey and Rudd] are fun to watch, though not as much fun as they might have been in a riskier, crazier movie.
Critic Score: 3/5

March 21, 2013 Full Review
A.O. Scott
A.O. Scott
New York Times

Director Weitz doesn't come close to pulling off the film's drastic tonal shifts, but at least it's an improvement over his last two films ...
Critic Score: 2.5/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Lou Lumenick
Lou Lumenick
New York Post

It promisingly pairs Fey with the dreamy-funny Paul Rudd, though they generate warmth without ever catching fire. The bigger problem is the story they're in.
Critic Score: 2/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Rafer Guzman
Rafer Guzman
Newsday

This thin envelope of a comedy checks all the boxes for being a phoned-in, phony, padded rom-com.
Critic Score: 1/5

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Joe Neumaier
Joe Neumaier
New York Daily News

Another formulaic spin on Hollywood's 21st century discovery, the mom-rom-com, with its disagreeable underlying messages about women, careers and motherhood.

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Mary F. Pols
TIME Magazine

I'd see Tina Fey and Paul Rudd in anything, but this is pushing it. Admission is so slight that a breeze could flatten it.
Critic Score: 2/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

There have been so many shrill, dumb, rinky-dink romantic comedies that it's easy to feel downright grateful when a smart, non-cheesy one comes along.
Critic Score: B

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

An often pleasant, faintly comedic drama that too often struggles to find its tone.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Moira MacDonald
Seattle Times

When Admission stumbles, which it does often, aiming low for easy laughs at the price of missed opportunities to go deeper, the picture lays there uninspired, like a slice of boiled ham.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Linda Barnard
Toronto Star

There's a good movie in this story. The one that got made is roughly half-good.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Michael Phillips
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune

"Admission" has some sublime moments, most of them involving Fey and Rudd dancing around their inevitable romance. The problem is in the foundation.
Critic Score: 2/4

March 21, 2013 Full Review
Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper
Chicago Sun-Times

You can take the kids, you can take grandma; everyone will be ever so slightly entertained.

March 20, 2013 Full Review
Andrew O'Hehir
Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com

What should be a hilarious, long-overdue pairing of two hugely likable, superstar comedians ends up being a major disappointment with "Admission."
Critic Score: 1.5/4

March 19, 2013 Full Review
Christy Lemire
Christy Lemire
Associated Press

Admission doesn't have the courage to suggest that a childless woman who's doing work she loves just may have it all-or at least her all.

March 19, 2013 Full Review
Stephanie Zacharek
Village Voice

Fey has the Sandra Bullock role -- exactly the kind of part that she has spent the last decade transcending. She's not bad in it, though.

March 18, 2013 Full Review
David Edelstein
David Edelstein
New York Magazine

What appears on paper to be an ideal three-dimensional, morally complex role for the quick-witted comedienne backfires in practice, relying on Fey to be funny in a movie that works better serious.

March 7, 2013 Full Review
Peter Debruge
Variety

Equal parts amiable and weightless, tough to take seriously and yet light on honest laughs.

March 6, 2013 Full Review
William Goss
Film.com

Paul Weitz betrays an erratic grip on the comic tone, and the misguided central characters emerge, in the end, as less likeable than they ought to be.

March 6, 2013 Full Review
Todd McCarthy
Todd McCarthy
Hollywood Reporter

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