Tina Fey and Paul Rudd are such talented, likable people that having them bounce off of each other in a romantic comedy should be a no-brainer way to make a movie that people will like. But when you’re going into a movie that’s directed by Paul Weitz, like Admission is, you can’t be so sure about what you’re going to get. This is the guy who has recently brought us filth like Little Fockers and Being Flynn, after all. And, more than that, Admission’s advertisements made it look impossibly cutesy and formulaic. Isn’t this the sort of stuff that’s supposed to be beneath performers like Fey and Rudd? Shouldn’t people this smart be too self-conscious to grin and bear their way through contrived meet-cutes and childish flirting?
Yes, they should be, and the good news is Admission isn’t the terrible movie about adult people behaving like awkward teenagers it was advertised as, so we don’t have to worry ourselves with such concerns. The characters Fey and Rudd play are actually believably adult, and they’re dealing with much more important matters than whether or not the two of them will get together and do some smooching. Plus, the intellectual elitism of the Princeton setting allows the writers (Karen Croner adapting a Jean Hanff Korelitz novel) to go for more high-minded quips and references than you’d usually get from a comedy like this, so they play like a breath of fresh air.
That’s not to say that the script doesn’t have its problems though. There’s a running gag where Fey’s ex-boyfriend and his new love interest always show up at the exact moment that she’s doing something embarrassing that feels too broad and is completely out of place in a movie that’s otherwise dealing with fairly dramatic issues, like the relationships between parents and children and assuming responsibility for your past mistakes. And though Fey and Rudd’s characters are well-defined and brought to life by engaging talents, the struggles they’re experiencing are just kind of dull. They’re good people acting as mentors to good kids, so there’s very little dramatic tension that’s built. There’s no big thing that all of the action is leading up to, and there certainly aren’t any big belly laughs coming from the comedy—just a handful of chuckles—so what you’re left with is something nice, and fairly capable, but ultimately forgettable. Which, of course, is an improvement for recent Weitz, so maybe next time around he’ll get his hands on a script that’s actually funny and finally break that slump he’s been in.
