In the movie, Fey is portraying Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at Princeton University. Evaluating thousands of hopeful college students, the exceedingly bright and driven woman lives her life by the book, both at work and in her relationship with a faculty colleague, Mark (Sheen). Visiting an experimental New Hampshire high school submitting applicants, Portia is caught off guard when its co-founder John Halsey (Rudd) turns out to have attended college with her. She is then floored when reminded of the life-altering decision that she made while still a student herself; she had a son, who she gave up for adoption, and who she now realizes may be one of John's students, the precocious misfit Jeremiah. As Portia's emotions surge forth, she finds her life turning upside down in embarrassing ways and begins to bend the admissions rules – in the hopes of getting Jeremiah on the best path while perhaps righting her own as well.

MOVIE REVIEW

The high-paced world of university admission offices is explored in Admission, which succeeds primarily in showing how there is nothing high-paced or particularly interesting about university admission offices. The inspired pairing of Tina Fey and Paul Rudd offered promise, but the end result is a harmless but shrugworthy effort.
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