Review Roundup: ADMISSION, Starring Tina Fey & Paul Rudd

Review Roundup: ADMISSION, Starring Tina Fey & Paul Rudd Paul Rudd and Tina Fey star in The Comedy ADMISSION, opening in theaters today. Directed by Paul Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy, In Good Company) the film is written by Karen Croner and Jean Hanff Korelitz. The cast also includes Michael Sheen and Lily Tomlin.

In Admission, Tina Fey stars as Portia Nathan, an admissions officer for Princeton University who finds herself recruiting at a strange just "keep livin" commune headed by her former college classmate (Rudd). Things get confusingly complicated when she unexpectedly discovers that one of his students may just be her teenage son that she gave up for adoption years ago.

Let's see what the critics have to say:

Todd McCarhy,The Hollywood Reporter: Deftly playing Tina Fey's feminist-icon mother, Lily Tomlin all but steals Admission, a knowing but uneven comedy about the neuroticism of the college-admission process on both sides of the equation. The foibles of supposedly intelligent adult characters cause humor to erupt at odd moments throughout this quasi-farcical look at high-end academia, but director Paul Weitz betrays an erratic grip on the comic tone, and the misguided central characters emerge, in the end, as less likable than they ought to be.

RAFER GUZMÁN, NY Newsday: [Admission] 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. "Admission," based on Jean Hanff Korelitz's 2009 novel, is the kind of Hollywood hokum that Fey would have skewered on a spit with a Weekend Update on "Saturday Night Live."

Michael Phillips, LA Times: It's easy to watch, because Fey and Rudd - individually and sometimes together - ensure a level of ease and confidence. But "Admission" is the tale of a woman losing it and then regaining it. Fey, despite her enormous talent, never seems to lose it in a way that would activate her character's riskier, messier impulses.

Lou Lumenick, NY Post: 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 ("Being Flynn' and "Little Fockers'), if far inferior to "About a Boy,' which Weitz co-directed with his more talented brother Chris.

"Admission' still has considerable entertainment value as a flawed vehicle for Fey. But even she can't make you believe (mild spoiler) that Portia would end up committing career suicide to further the ambitions of a boy who, in all likelihood, will end up flunking out of Princeton.

David Edelstein, Vulture: That first half of Admission is a lot for an actress to overcome. It's not just very bad, it's very fast, as if someone had overwound the metronome. Fairly naturalistic lines are delivered at the pace of screwball zingers - which stubbornly refuse to zing.

Drew McWeeny, Hitfix: I wouldn't call "Admission" a bad film, but I think it's a muted pleasure at best, even with Tina Fey and Paul Rudd both doing their best to keep things light and charming.

Photo: David Lee, Focus Features