Saturday At The Movies: Admission

I like Tina Fey. I really do. Admittedly, I didn’t watch 30 Rock. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be hilarious. I just never got around to it. Netflix will be my friend at some point, I’m sure. I loved Tina on SNL, though. She was always fantastic during Weekend Update, whether she was with Jimmy Fallon or Amy Poehler. However, I’ve never really viewed Tina as an actress, at least on the big screen (though she did do good work in Mean Girls). Date Night with Steve Carrell – didn’t enjoy it. And now there’s Admission, which hit DVD/Blu-ray a few weeks ago. This is one of those shoulda, coulda flicks. Tina Fey and the often hillarious Paul Rudd should have been able to do something great together. Instead they did Admission.

In this flick, Tina Fey is a Princeton admissions officer who gave up a child at a young age. Paul Rudd is a teacher at an alternative high school who thinks he’s found her son at his school and wants to get him into Princeton. Nothing about that description is funny, right? Now imagine two hours of it.

I don’t think the Queen or I laughed once during the entire film. It had some cute moments, but when you’ve got two actors with a solid comedy pedigree between them, you expect to be laughing out loud or rolling on the floor laughing or any other selection of acronyms. When you’re sitting on the couch for two hours and barely cracking a smile? Well, you’re pretty much stuck with a pretty solid failure.

I often wonder, when you catch comedic actors in a bad film, what were they thinking? Did the script read better on the page and lose itself in translation to the screen? Did Tina and Paul think there was actually a romantic comedy on the page? Whatever the case, there is no question that Admission is one of the most missable films either of these two talents will ever be involved in.