Josh Shelov’s smug and smutty farce employs an estimable cast in an only sporadically funny story about a couple from Delaware who want to get their 6-year-old daughter into an exclusive Manhattan private school (after the admissions deadline) in the worst possible way.
This turns out to involve the computer-programmer father (the beloved Neil Patrick Harris, playing it straight in more ways than one) pretending to be a poet.
With the encouragement of his wife (Bonnie Somerville), NPH reads the school’s duly impressed trustees a series of lewd text messages written by a randy pal (Peter Serafinowicz) whose townhouse he has commandeered for a party.
Amy Sedaris, channeling her inner Frances McDormand as a hyper admissions coach, gets most of the laughs.
Among the others making a buffet of the scenery are Christopher McDonald, as a school-board president who takes NPH to a swinger’s club; Kate Mulgrew as McDonald’s Hillary Clinton-esque wife; and Jenna Stern as the school’s uptight dean, who is turned on by NPH’s alleged verse.
Besides taking on a much-worked-over satirical target, “The Best and the Brightest” mines tired, stereotypical humor about the city’s ethnic population.
Not to mention the idea that some poor, misguided souls might actually prefer to send their kids to public school.