48
Metascore
39 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanAdmission, a likably breezy campus movie directed by Paul Weitz (About a Boy), is blissfully non-insulting.
- 63McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMcClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreFey plays this inner-outer conflict well. But at her most wide-eyed and vulnerable, she still has trouble making a romance credible, even with Rudd, edgy comedy’s puppy dog of a leading man.
- 50Film.comWilliam GossFilm.comWilliam GossActions do have their consequences, though, and Weitz doesn’t try to end things too tidily for their own good. Were only that he had succeeded in committing to one of those films over the other, then Admission might have been this year’s “Liberal Arts” rather than this year’s “Smart People.”
- 50The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDeftly playing Tina Fey's feminist-icon mother, Lily Tomlin all but steals Admission, a knowing but uneven comedy about the neuroticism of the college-admission process on both sides of the equation.
- 50VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeThe comedy feels forced as Fey works overtime to insert unnecessary zingers at the tail of every scene. If the cast weren’t so endearing, her actions could easily sour an audience on the whole experience, and Admission digs itself a hole only an ensemble this appealing can escape.
- 50Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekVillage VoiceStephanie ZacharekWeitz, an openhearted director if not always a precise one, can't bring himself to whet the knives. Only Fey drills to the center of what Admission might have been—her performance has more layers of emotion than the picture does.
- 40New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinThat first half of Admission is a lot for an actress to overcome. It’s not just very bad, it’s very fast, as if someone had overwound the metronome. Fairly naturalistic lines are delivered at the pace of screwball zingers — which stubbornly refuse to zing.
- 40Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfAdmission’s comedy has walls built around it; director Paul Weitz (About a Boy), normally a softener of harsh edges, might have been stymied by Fey’s snappy persona.
- 38Slant MagazineSlant MagazineThe estrogenic elements prove widely ineffectual, but they're just pieces of this overlong, overloaded misfire whose double-entendre title ultimately just goads the jaded viewer to admit defeat.