For a junior that is quickly approaching having to begin the application process to colleges and deciding what I want to do with the rest of my life, Admission seemed like a good movie to go see. I’ll admit, that going into the movie, I didn’t quite know what it was about. I knew that it had Tina Fey (Saturday Night Live) and Paul Rudd (Role Models) in it and had something to do with college admissions.
So I jumped at the opportunity to see it and was actually quite surprised to find an nearly empty. The movie starts with the life of Portia Nathan (Fey), who works in the admissions office of Princeton. It shows her ‘boring’ life, which consists of reading essays, having wine and poetry nights with her boyfriend-of-ten-years and attending dry professors’ luncheons. After 16 years of being at Princeton, Nathan has forgotten the outside world and has stopped thinking of the students who apply as human beings but rather as ‘applicants.’
When Princeton is knocked down to second rank on the best colleges list, the admissions office is put under a great deal of pressure, and to top it off, a huge promotion opens up for Nathan. She is competing with a particularly snarky co-worker (aren’t they always?) and the new job is all Nathan has always wanted … she thinks.
However, when she visits one of the high schools to present about Princeton, she meets John Pressman (Rudd), a high school teacher, with whom she has an instant connection. After a surprising turn of events, in which Nathan’s boyfriend leaves her for his pregnant mistress, Nathan meets one of Pressman’s students who turns her life upside down.
Nathan finds out that this student, Jeremiah (Nat Wolff) might be the son that she put up for adoption years ago during a secret pregnancy in college. It is Jeremiah’s dream to attend Princeton, and Nathan finds herself becoming one of those over-eager parents that she had detested and rolled her eyes at in the beginning of the movie. She throws herself into trying to get him accepted into Princeton without losing her job in the process.
Without giving away the entirety of the movie, Admission was actually really good. It was quirky and had humor in all the right places. About half way through, I became really apprehensive that this would just be another one of those cheesy feel-good movies where everything works itself out in the end, but much to my surprise, this wasn’t the case at all. The movie was surprisingly unpredictable and had an admirable real-life quality about it.
The acting was good, but I was expecting that with actors like Fey and Rudd. Not only have I always found Paul Rudd adorable, but I have always admired Tina Fey’s quirkiness … and her style. It’s just so classy!
Admission is worth seeing. It’s a feel good movie that had it’s moments. It’s not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but if you’re bored over Spring Break and have nothing to do, I don’t think you’ll regret this decision, and to top it all off, you’ll even get to see a cow giving birth!
By Trisha Chaudhary