Admission Reviews
Top CriticThe many strands of this amiable yet overstuffed romantic comedy don't hang together, though each, on its own, has a modest charm.
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.
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.
Granted, this is not automatic laugh-riot material, nor should it be, but didn't Fey recognize how hackneyed it all is?
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| Original Score: C-
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.
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| Original Score: 4/5
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.
Some films are electric - Admission settles for alternating current.
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| Original Score: 3/4
When in doubt, ma'am, just ask yourself: What would Tina Fey do?
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| Original Score: B
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.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Only Mr. Rudd emerges unscathed. He protects himself by being consistently affable in the face of heavy odds.
Everybody in "Admission" is funny - Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn - but they're not funny in "Admission."
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| Original Score: 2/4
While most college-themed comedies aim for low-SAT yucks, "Admission" tosses out jokes and cultural references that aim higher.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A genial, predictable and ultimately forgettable romantic comedy.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Cheerful, skittish entertainment that never takes its subject seriously enough.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Fey and Rudd achieve a couple of comedy mindmelds ... but they're fleeting, as Admission's outlandish contrivances continue to get in the way.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Infused with an almost relentless blandness, it's defined by soft comedy (a few laughs here and there), flaccid drama, and likeable actors.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
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.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
[Fey and Rudd] are fun to watch, though not as much fun as they might have been in a riskier, crazier movie.
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| Original Score: 3/5
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 ...
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
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.
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| Original Score: 2/4
This thin envelope of a comedy checks all the boxes for being a phoned-in, phony, padded rom-com.
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| Original Score: 1/5
Another formulaic spin on Hollywood's 21st century discovery, the mom-rom-com, with its disagreeable underlying messages about women, careers and motherhood.
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.
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| Original Score: 2/4
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.
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| Original Score: B
An often pleasant, faintly comedic drama that too often struggles to find its tone.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
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.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
There's a good movie in this story. The one that got made is roughly half-good.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
"Admission" has some sublime moments, most of them involving Fey and Rudd dancing around their inevitable romance. The problem is in the foundation.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Would that Fey had been as choosy and critical about the screenplay as her character is about personal essays attached to applications to Princeton University.
You can take the kids, you can take grandma; everyone will be ever so slightly entertained.
What should be a hilarious, long-overdue pairing of two hugely likable, superstar comedians ends up being a major disappointment with "Admission."
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
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.
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.
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.
Equal parts amiable and weightless, tough to take seriously and yet light on honest laughs.
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.
