Tadpole (2002)

So much average

Pretty Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Tadpole made a splash at Sundance, announcing the arrival of Gary Winick. But after Tadpole provided him with a ticket to the mainstream, Winick showed a predilection for blander, more middling material. The increasingly dire likes of 13 Going On 30, Charlotte's Web, Bride Wars and Letters to Juliet. This dreary, undistinguished career would have probably continued until it was suddenly cut short when Winick succumbed to brain cancer.Tadpole was quite risqué for the normally conservative Winick, and the one shining light in an otherwise throwaway career. You have to wonder what it was about Tadpole he got right that he managed to get wrong on everything else. And when a theme is a teen being romanced by a woman twice his age, something bound to raise the eyebrows of more than a few in an audience, Winick's accomplishment seems all the more remarkable. Winick seemed to fancy himself a Martin Scorsese or a Steven Spielberg. Someone with the capacity to take on any genre regardless of what it was: family films; rom-coms; fantasy, etc. Tadpole seemed to be Winick's attempt at a Woody Allen movie. It lacks the same introspection, but compared to everything still ahead for Winick, its a gem.Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) is visiting his parents in New York for Thanksgiving. He's got all the girls swooning over him, but he's only got eyes for Eve. She's smart, classy, sophisticated. Everything he wants in a woman. She's perfect, except for one pesky detail. She's his stepmother! Oscar hasn't even finished prep school yet, and just sees the age barrier as a hurdle to surmount.While his father Stanley (John Ritter) tries to set Oscar up with every teen girl on the Upper East Side, things spiral out of hand when Oscar falls into bed with Eve's best friend Diane (Bebe Neuwirth, delightful). She's quick to brag about it, while Oscar tries to sort out mixed emotions before Thanksgiving dinner.There's a scene in Tadpole when Oscar is described as having the soul of a man in a teen's body. Gary Winick later conducted a gender reversal on that idea, to much blander effect in 13 Going On 30. Tadpole was one film where Winick pulled everything together. Since he never pulled off that trick a second time, I suspect it was more to do with the excellence of the cast, and having such a witty script at his disposal.Admittedly, Tadpole makes things easier on itself by having a male teen (instead of a teen girl) caught in a love triangle with two older adults. Aaron Stanford is also too old to credibly play a teenager. But the script is deft the way it deals with Oscar's romantic entanglements. Part of the reason for this is because scriptwriters Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller place Oscar at the centre of a marvellous triptych of conflicting adults.Eve, Stanley and Diane are all well defined. Sigourney Weaver gives Eve a great injection of class. Its obvious why Oscar loves her so, even if she is his stepmother! John Ritter plays Stanley with perfect indifference to the insane situation going on around him. But the performance that lights up the film comes from the vastly underrated Bebe Neuwirth.Its great the way Neuwirth walks a fine line between spicing up her love life and committing such a reprehensible act. Diane doesn't mind sleeping with a teen who showed interest in a woman her age. Granted he was drunk at the time but Diane can learn to live with that! What amazed me more than anything about Tadpole is that for such a potentially squeamish topic, and something Winick never managed with the far safer Bride Wars or 13 Going On 30, is that the film is funny in spite of that.I did find it difficult to believe that Diane would want to boast to the girls in her age range about Oscar, but Neuwirth's delight at watching the situation snowball into a sublime comedy of errors is joyous. It all blossoms into one wonderful scene in a NY restaurant, where Oscar, Eve, Stanley and Diane are all at dinner together. Weaver's sobering intelligence, Ritter's condescension and Neuwirth's glee at Stanford's discomfort play off of one another superbly. The one thing that lets the film down is a bland visual scheme. Tadpole was made extremely low budget, and it shows. The film looks like its being captured through the lens of a camcorder, but not like cinema verite. I think that was all they could afford on the budget they had at hand, but because the actors are working from such a terrific script, that's enough to carry Tadpole over the rough spots.Another plus is Winick is content to let the actors lead the show without too much interference from him. He just lets them tell the story without resorting to obvious signposting. Something that seemed to escape him on Charlotte's Web and Bride Wars. The nearest it ever gets to that is the constant quotations from Voltaire. I'm not sure the film needed these because they tend to get in the way of the narrative, and what with only a running time of 78 minutes, they feel more intrusive than informative.Still, Tadpole is a film of surprising charm. It never does resolve the dilemma it sets up for itself, and Oscar is more naive than he likes to believe. I also would have preferred an extended running time, and it works better as comedy than it ever does as drama, but Tadpole is winning, sharp and very insightful. All things you can never say about any other Gary Winick movie.

"One should always aim at being interesting rather than exact" – Voltaire. Never has a truer word been spoken and this film would have saved itself by paying heed. The basic plot concerns an overly intelligent and smugly sophisticated 15 year old Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) and an infatuation with his much older stepmother, Eve (Sigourney Weaver). No prizes for guessing which 1967 Mike Nichols film this is styled on.One drunken night, Oscar bumps into Eve's best friend, Diane (Bebe Neuwirth), a similarly older lady. Diane seizes her opportunity and seduces Oscar like the classic cougar that she is through the guise of wearing a scarf and perfume that remind Oscar of his stepmother. Now, it should be duly noted that if you're a 15 year old guy with a fetish for the older woman, then said older woman could not take any better form than that of Diane when played by Ms Neuwirth. However, the overall plot is not a challenge and distinctly lacks any sense that it might actually be going somewhere until the last ten minutes. Importantly, the last ten minutes turn out to be just as disappointing as the rest of this film.The only pillars of strength for 'Tadpole' are the performances turned in by Bebe Neuwirth and John Ritter. Their time on screen manages to break the monotony of what is otherwise a drab and disengaged motion picture. It says a considerable amount about a film when an actress of Sigourney Weaver's caliber fails to resonate or lift the tone, as even she appears bored at times.The characters seem wholly underdeveloped and the interesting ones appear to drop off the face of the earth almost as quickly as they were shoved onto it. Eve, as Oscar's stepmother could have been an interesting version of the love interest but her limited time on screen leaves a vague and insipid impression of the character. Oscar is an acceptable protagonist, but given that the film deals with a rich topic for storytelling, he is also somewhat disappointing for a male lead with what could have been an excellent show and tell of the Oedipus Complex. The fact that Aaron Stanford is evidently older than his character's 15 years has not gone amiss with either the scriptwriter or the director as the supporting cast constantly reminds the viewer that he is indeed older than he seems, in more ways than one.As John Ritter puts it during the dinner sequence, incidentally the best scene in the film, "it's all very The Graduate." Indeed it is, minus the finesse. Crammed with embarrassingly clichéd musical dream sequences, that would quite frankly make Rodgers and Hammerstein seem like a welcome addition to any film collection, we have before us a disastrous attempt to make a Graduate-esque teenage crush appear facetious. Winnick has failed to provide an attention grabbing look at Oscar's dilemma, instead eliciting the comical whimsy of the protagonist's daydreams to the point of exaggerated (and plain bad) slapstick. Overall, 'Tadpole' suggests that it could have, should have and would have been better had Winnick been prepared to put some oomph into the production. It's a shame to see actors of Weaver's, Ritter's and Neuwirth's ability being wasted on shoddy production values and lazy attention to pulldown's and video field capacity. The result is a half-baked comedy that is watchable (tenacity spanning) but at times lacking in passion. Very disappointing ultimately.

"Tadpole" is a poignant tale of a 15-year-old French student, Oscar who falls in love with his stepmother. He doesn't like girls of his own age because they are shallow, and on the course of this complex sexual preference of his, he sleeps with the sensual forty-something friend of his stepmother too. Aaron Stanford is quite good as the lead character. He nicely captures Oscar's apparent innocence mixed with strong desire for older women. Whereas Sigourney Weaver is surprisingly flat and unimpressive as the stepmother. Perhaps she was not a good choice for the role too. I would have preferred Meg Ryan. However, Bebe Neuwirth is brilliant as her friend Diane who has a sexual interest on Oscar. She is fluent, natural and funny. John Ritter also gives a good performance as his father.The film is a low-budget one, shot in about two weeks. And it doesn't get out of that setback. The screenplay is poor. The idea of quoting Voltaire from time to time is disturbing. The music used in the film is poorly chosen (except Paul Simon's "Only living boy in New York" maybe, though I think it's used in wrong place). Fine acting, the freshness of the story and nice location shots of city landscape makes it a fair film to watch.

Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) is a fifteen years old French student, who lives in USA, and spends the Thanksgiving with his father Stanley Grubman (John Ritter) and his stepmother Eve (Sigourney Weaver) in their apartment in New York. His mother is French and lives in France. Oscar is very precocious, cultured, polyglot and loves poetry, and he finds the girls of his age very silly, feeling a great attraction for older women. Oscar has a crush on his stepmother. However, her forty and something years best friend Diane Lodder (Bebe Neuwirth) has an affair with Oscar, and he becomes quite confused with this new situation. "Tadpole" is a reasonable comedy only, having some funny situations, but never reaching a target, having a terrible conclusion. When the viewer finishes watching the film, he will certainly ask: -What is the point? Further, in accordance with the information in IMDb, Aaron Stanford was born in 1977. Therefore, he was completely miscast, being twenty-five years old and pretending he is fifteen. Further, he is not charismatic as his character would require. John Ritter is a reasonable actor, but looks very snob in the role of a history professor of Columbia. Sigourney Weaver is lost, in a character who is neither "Mrs. Robinson" nor an example of a faithful wife. The best parts of the story belong to Bebe Neuwirth, who is amazingly funny and makes the film worth, together with its soundtrack. In summary, "Tadpole" is a forgettable entertainment, recommended for killing time. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Um Jovem Sedutor" ("A Young Seducer")