Kerry Kohansky
Occupation
Filmmaker
Admission Review
By Rich Cline
Very Good
We generally expect more wacky humour from Fey and Rudd than this comedy, which is packed with perhaps too-smart dialog and a lot of warm sentiment. It's an odd mix, looking for jokes in gender roles and higher education, while also finding dramatic and romantic moments along the way. But in the end, the engaging actors make it worth a look.
Fey plays Portia, an admissions officer at the prestigious Princeton University, who's in competition with her office rival (Reuben) for a big promotion as their boss (Shawn) gets ready to retire. Unhelpfully, Portia's long-term boyfriend (Sheen) chooses this moment to leave her. Diving into her job, she visits a progressive high school where the director John (Rudd) is trying a bit too hard to get her to consider unconventionally gifted student Jeremiah (Wolff) for admission to Princeton. Then John tells Portia that he thinks Jeremiah is the son she gave up for adoption 18 years earlier. Meanwhile, Portia's aggressive feminist mother (the superb Tomlin) brings up even more past issues she's never quite dealt with.
The way the screenplay piles all of this on Portia at the same time is more than a little contrived, but Fey juggles it effortlessly, throwing hilariously intelligent one-liners around even in the more intensely serious scenes. Opposite her, Rudd is more understated than usual, and also creates a strongly defined character as a rootless wanderer who just wants to help make the world a better place, but needs to pay more attention to his adopted Ugandan son (Spears). Yes, screenwriter Kroner throws in every variety of parent-child issues too.
Continue reading: Admission Review
In Good Company Review
OK
It's one of those nightmare scenarios of which feel-good stories are made: Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid), middle-aged family man and top sales guy at a big, Sports Illustrated-like magazine, gets thrown for a loop when his company is bought and he gets demoted to make room for Carter Duryea (Topher Grace), some whiz kid half his age. Oh, and his daughter wants to transfer from SUNY to the much more expensive NYU. Oh, and that night when he gets home, his wife tells him she's pregnant. At first it seems that In Good Company is not going to go for the feel-good resolution in which lessons are learned, lives are improved, and everybody fades into a happy sunset... but then it does, and it's hard not to feel cheated.
Whatever else may be said, this film is the work of consummate professionals, and that doesn't mean it's soulless but competent hackwork. Writer/director Paul Weitz showed with his wonderful, glowing adaptation of Nick Hornby's About a Boy that he could tell heartwarming stories that didn't insult the mind and could inject just enough acidity into a romance to keep a movie from flopping into a messy, Love, Actually-style mess. The directing and writing here are superbly crisp, and one really couldn't ask for better performances, both from the stars and supporting cast.
Continue reading: In Good Company Review