Admission, starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, is this week’s big new comedy – unless a movie Rob Schneider and the ShamWow guy made together called inAPPropriate Comedy turns out to be much better than it sounds. While the reviews for Admission are faring a lot better than those for inAPPropriate Comedy, they’re still pretty mixed. Review aggregators Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic gave Admission 46% and 49%, respectively, with most critics praising Tina Fey and Paul Rudd while sleighting everything else about the movie.
Directed by Paul Weitz (About a Boy, Little Fockers) and based on the book of the same name by Jean Hanff Korelitz, Admission stars Fey as a Princeton admissions officer who is introduced to a gifted student who he believes to be the son she gave up for adoption years ago by a guy who runs an alternative high school (Rudd). Most critics have pointed out the predictability of the story and deemed its writing/direction subpar, while saying positive things about stars Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone writes, “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,†while The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips feels, “There’s a good movie in this story. The one that got made is roughly half-good.†The San Fransciso Chronicle agrees, saying, “Everybody in Admission is funny - Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn - but they’re not funny in Admission.†Hopefully, Tina Fey and Paul Rudd will star together in something worthy of their talents someday, as they’re both great and the prospect of a movie starring the two of them sounds pretty good.