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Rated PG-13. Opens Friday.
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Future sociologists researching early 21st-century cultural anxieties surrounding adoption and surrogacy will probably find a lot to work with in Tina Fey's oeuvre, particularly the 2008 feature Baby Mama and the final season of 30 Rock, and now in director Paul Weitz's Admission. Fey portrays a child-phobic Princeton admissions officer who faces a crisis of conscience when a handsome "alternative school" teacher (Paul Rudd) reveals that one of his brightest students (Nat Wolff), who wants to go to Princeton, may well be the child Fey gave up for adoption years earlier. Fey isn't the only one on familiar ground, thematic or otherwise; Rudd is also playing his stock role, and while neither he nor Fey can help but be charming, they're not especially compelling, either. Mostly, they just make us wish they were in a better, funnier movie — heck, the most exciting thing connected to Admission may be seeing Paul Rudd making the promotional rounds with long hair and a handlebar moustache for the currently shooting Anchorman sequel. (Fingers crossed for a Fey cameo!) Admission does have more voting-based intrigue than any movie since Lincoln, if you're into that sort of thing, as well as the great Wallace Shawn and Lily Tomlin collecting paychecks. But they all deserve better.