Admission [DVD]

Description

To describe Tina Fey's character in Admission as a "Liz Lemon type" wouldn't be completely accurate. Portia Nathan, her Princeton admissions officer, exhibits fewer nerd tendencies than Fey's 30 Rock producer, but her professional life also trumps her personal one. Though she has a longtime boyfriend (Michael Sheen), he treats her more like a pal than a partner, and her relationship with her radical mother (Lily Tomlin) has always been rocky, but on a visit to an alternative high school to recruit applicants, her staid world undergoes a profound shift. First, she meets educator John Pressman (Paul Rudd), a college acquaintance who has also struggled to distinguish himself from his family, and then she meets Jeremiah (Nat Wolff), a self-taught genius with poor grades and high test scores. John believes Jeremiah deserves a place at Princeton--and that he's the child she gave up for adoption 18 years before. Portia struggles to avoid favoritism, while giving Jeremiah a chance at an Ivy League education and convincing her boss (Wally Shawn) that she deserves to lead the admissions department over her passive-aggressive colleague (Gloria Reuben). To complicate matters further, she finds herself attracted to John, a single father with an adopted son. The conclusion combines the expected with the unforeseen, a trademark of In Good Company director Paul Weitz, who wrings more tears from Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel than laughs, but Fey keeps Portia sympathetic even as she makes a few moral miscalculations en route to a new and different future. --Kathleen C Fennessy