There was a time when Paul Weitz used to make great movies. After reviving the teen sex comedy with “American Pie” and adapting the Nick Hornby bestseller “About a Boy” alongside brother Chris, the eldest Weitz stepped out on his own, continuing his fantastic track record with underrated gems like “In Good Company” and “American Dreamz.” In recent years, however, the director’s career has been marred by a series of flops, and though “Admission” is probably the best of his cinematic failures, it’s a failure nonetheless. Not even Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, arguably two of Hollywood’s most likable performers, are able to do much to save Weitz’s latest effort, and that only makes “Admission” even more of a disappointment.
Fey stars as Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at Princeton University who spends her days diligently poring over student applications and her nights with her dull, longtime boyfriend Mark (Michael Sheen), who also works at the university as an English literature professor. When she receives a call one day from John Pressman (Rudd), a teacher at the alternative academy New Quest, asking her to visit the campus to meet a promising student named Jeremiah (Nat Wolff), she’s completely blindsided by John’s suggestion that the gifted teen is the child she gave up for adoption nearly 20 years earlier. Though Jeremiah is far from the typical Princeton applicant, he’s a prodigy and self-proclaimed autodidact who wants nothing more than to attend the university. But while Portia comes to appreciate Jeremiah the more time that she spends with him, she faces an uphill battle convincing her peers that he’s worth the risk, all while hiding the fact that he may be her son.
