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Tadpole
Directed by Gary Winick
Starring: Aaron Stanford, Sigourney Weaver, John Ritter, Bebe Neuwirth
Running Time: 1:18
Country: USA
Year: 2002
Web: Official Site
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This immature frog of a movie is just that: an immature frog. Only 78 minutes long, the truncated length frustrates us because so many potentially lovely limbs of development were possible but left out. What happens here is, a young (15 years old) man's obsessional love for his beautiful 40-ish stepmother ultimately is redirected, at the end of the movie, toward girls his own age. This is accomplished somehow by his going to bed with the stepmom's best friend, the affair becoming revealed to his father and stepmother both (in a very funny scene), and the boy's revelation (this is all very murkily dramatized) that, not only isn't stepmom going to respond to him, her husband (his father) loves her very much. What's wrong with this picture?
For the sake of naughty laughter, we're supposed to accept that this makes sense. The young man, named Oscar Grubman (and played by Aaron Stanford) is likeable. We feel for his tender soul, but we're not just going to laugh at him when he falls into bed with Diane (played by Bebe Neuwirth), we're going to wonder what happens next, what will the complications be? Would you believe there really aren't many? I don't. The filmmaker wants us to believe that the sexual encounter is of little consequence to Oscar, his only worry being that his beloved might find out and feel somehow betrayed. Oscar shows no continued interest in Diane, except to make sure she keeps their secret a secret. What planet is this boy from? The planet of Screenwriter's Logic. On Earth, a sexual encounter usually leads to multiple complications that last longer than dinner at a fancy restaurant. I guess this teenage boy doesn't respond much to sex. That must be why there's little in this movie that addresses the societal taboo of youth going to bed with grown adult. Hey, no big deal, the movie seems to say. And in this case, it is no big deal mainly because it's treated for the laughs it provides the adult/knowing audience on one hand, and because it's as if it's a matter of "teen boy dancing with his girlfriend's best friend at the prom."
Yes, it's a nice change of movie pace to have the young Oscar NOT sex-obsessed. But there ought to be SOME sort of to his "coming of age." The logic of this movie has it that Oscar at the end of the film is suddenly attracted to a classmate whom he ignored in the first scene. The whole thing is bizarre. Yet, maybe it could have made some sense, if we'd been privy to the scenes of complications between Fade in: and Fade out:
We laugh at first at Oscar's precocity. He reminds me of a young Jeremy Irons in both looks and intensity. There's a nice bit early on about his focusing on women's hands in order to understand their souls, though this theme was later dropped. The poor boy goes around quoting Voltaire, as these types do in movies. Voltaire, Camus. Whomever. The French connection is important here; Oscar speaks French fluently, and it is implied that his French mother (whom we never see) who has moved back to Paris is indirectly responsible for his "mature" choices. Ooh, la la.
And what's up with Sigourney Weaver (stepmom Eve)? In her earliest scenes, she seems like a lost actor, looking for her character. She has a faraway spaciness that we don't understand. Later on we're given some additional information: she's "not happy." For a while it looked like the movie was going to go into some detail, letting us understand what her story was (as well as everyone else's story), but no. Sigourney finds something to do finally in her scene with Charlie when the truth about his feelings for her is revealed. Her acting didn't cut it as a medical researcher, but she worked more successfully as a love object. By the end of the movie, Eve is supposedly made happy again after her husband is tipped off (by his son) that she's "not happy." He'll take her away on a trip. Ta da.
If there were ever a case of stunted growth, this Tadpole is very much it. If we're generous we might think of this film as a lengthy short. Less generous, we might feel cheated by its wispiness and its use of cutesy chapter titles throughout the movie that suggest depth in the material when there's none. Plus, the film's clumsy (at times) digital camera work allows us to think of it as a student film. (And two of the characters' last names are Tisch, which happens to be the name of NYU's film school. That's about as deep an analysis of meaning in this film as you can get.) On the other hand, many people have enjoyed the film, and it somehow won the Best Dramatic Director award at Sundance Film Festival 2002. Good performances, especially by Neuwirth and Stanford, "suggestive" sexual situations and a few good lines, mixed with sunlight reflecting on the snow, some French language, and, there you have it, I guess. But this Tadpole cannot become a frog, a prince, or a satisfying full-length feature film.
Carol Saturansky
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Tadpole review
