Sunday, March 24, 2013

Admission Review

If you are hoping to see Admission to get in your quota of Tina Fey jokes after the Oscars, think again. This movie is not the comedy that it appears to be in its trailers. That sounds like I am about to give a bad review, but quite the opposite is actually true. Having just walked in the door from seeing the film I still have a lot of thoughts rolling around in my head. But one thing that I am sure about is that this is a great, different, dramatic, but lighthearted film.

Tina Fey and Paul Rudd star in a story all about an admission counselor at Princeton University and the strange happenings she gets herself into upon visiting an alternative school called Quest. She encounters one of the teachers at the school and one special student. Turns out the teacher (Paul Rudd) has been tracking her down because he believes the prodigy student (Nat Wolff) to be her son that she gave up for adoption long ago. She has to go against what her job stands for to fight for this kid's admittance into one of the most elite schools in the country. And along the way she falls in love after getting her heart broken in the first ten minutes of the film. It's a quirky storyline filled with quirky characters. I am calling it the alternative movie about an alternative school. Sounds odd, but to me it was one of those movies that sticks with you. The characters are real in a strange way. You feel like you are truly watching these people's lives unfold in a peculiar way. The message is way deeper than it what it first appears. It's a movie about finding yourself and then being happy with the person that you found. Of course there is a lot more to the story, but that's what Jentertainment managed to take away as the moral of the story.

Both of the stars are known for being some of the funniest in the business, but these roles are different from their norm. Sure, there are a few jokes thrown in for comic relief, and yes they fall in love and it's quite adorbs, but underneath of all that they are playing dramatic roles. You get the glimpse of Tina Fey as both her 30 Rock character and her Baby Mama character and Paul Rudd's performance is reminiscent of last fall's Perks of Being a Wallflower. But all of these glimpses take place through a new set of eyes. I felt like I was seeing both of them in a brand new light and I was a big fan. Nat Wolff the boy who plays the Princeton applicant/maybe son is also brilliant and has grown up a lot from his stint on The Naked Brothers Band television show.

If you are looking for a great film where the actors are brilliantly cast in roles that you thought unlikely for them to occur in, then this is your movie. I wouldn't want to miss this one. While others are denying themselves admission (see what I did there?), I checked the acceptance box, purchased my ticket and I'm not sorry. 

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