Admission

Film (2013)

With Tina Fey (Portia Nathan), Gloria Reuben (Corinne), Paul Rudd (John Pressman), Wallace Shawn (Clarence), Michael Sheen (Mark), Nat Wolff (Jeremiah), Travaris Spears (Nelson), Lily Tomlin (Susannah), Oleg Krupa (Polokov)

Portia Nathan (Tina Fey) is a long-time member of the admissions staff at Princeton. She is approached by John Pressman (Paul Rudd), a teacher at a new, alternative school in New Hampshire, about the possibility of admitting one of their students. Portia goes to visit his school and meets John and the student, Jeremiah (Nat Wolff). It turns out that John and Portia were in college together and he brings some new, interesting and personal information to Portia. Things get quite complicated, with serious implications for Portia’s job at Princeton.

This perfectly delightful, not brilliantly executed, film is one of those treats which somehow retains its pleasurable qualities while exposing all of its flaws.

The script is not bad. It has its predictable turns and predictable surprises, and some real surprises, and it does paint some nice characters.

Tina Fey and Paul Rudd are both great comic actors and have a nice and believable chemistry together. They both artfully maintain a witty awareness while retaining a self-possession that enable them to be believable romantic leads. They are astute comic actors who go for a longer, more subtle, trajectory of amusement rather than for bold belly laughs.

It is no surprise, then, that two other comedians, Lily Tomlin and Wallace Shawn, highly adept in this long-trajectory style of humor, appear here. Lily Tomlin once said, in an interview, as I recall, that she went for smiles rather than laughs. One of the great pleasures of this film is the consistency with which this team of humorists, all so well versed in this style, work, in ensemble, to collectively produce that kind of tastefully nuanced humor.

Despite the capacities of the actors, much of the production value of the film is hokey. The script is pretty good, but, when it leans towards sentimentality the omnipresent mawkish music pushes it over the edge.

Gloria Reuben, a long-time cast member on the epic TV series ER, and recently seen in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, does a nice turn here as a not so nice Princeton admissions officer.

Travaris Spears (Nelson) as John’s young son, Nat Wolff (Jeremiah) as the prospective Princeton student, and Oleg Krupa (Polokov), as a noted Princeton professor with a salty soul and a romantic heart, all contribute nicely to the mix.

The film assesses, with its own narrative logic, the craziness of the competition for spots in elite colleges. It gives space for reflection about the hornets’ nest of familial pressures and expectations, appropriately invoking skepticism and irony along the way.

– BADMan