John Ritter and Sigourney Weaver are fine, but almost anyone could have played their rather generic parts.Įven if Patrick hadn't so heartily endorsed this film, I would have been disappointed with it. Apart from a small part as Pyro in the X-Men film series, his career hasn't really taken off yet. I've always been a fan of Bebe Neuwirth and Aaron Stanford does an okay, but hardly Oscar worthy, job in the lead. To be fair, there are some mildly amusing scenes and the cast is talented. There's not a lot of substance to it and would require padding to stretch it any further. It takes place entirely over one Thanksgiving break. The film runs barely over an hour and has the feel of a short story. Somehow, the story would have you believe that by kissing her, his issues are cleared up, but I see time spent on a psychiatrist's couch in his future. This seems like the most obvious rationale for his obsession with older women, including Eve, his step-mother, whose less than glamorous appearance clearly makes the attraction more psychological than physical. His mother is never shown and as she lives in another country, is clearly absent from most of his life. He's even able to buy drinks in a bar without a problem.Ĭlearly Oscar has mother issues, something his academic father fails to notice. He looks like the movie version of 15, but if you put a real 15 year old next to him, you'd realize that he looks like a college student and not a high-schooler. If the filmmakers get away with this plot point at all, it's because Aaron Stanford doesn't really look 15. This is part of the double standard that comes with this variation of genders, and if a 40 year old man had slept with his 15 year old daughter, I doubt John Ritter's character would have taken the news with such aplomb. Of course the elephant in the room is that no one blinks an eye when a 40 year old woman sleeps with a 15 year old boy. It's basically the plot of a porn film without the sex scenes. Even his best friend's mother seems to be undressing him with her eyes. I've never seen so many lustful female glances at one male outside of a James Bond film. He quotes Voltaire and middle-aged women and teenage girls go damp between the thighs. Oscar is a literary nerd, which in this fantasy, somehow makes him attractive to absolutely every woman he meets. The plot is a teenage boy's fantasy with the addition of an Oedipus complex.
It's mildly amusing at best and filmed on a low-grade digital camera that gives it an amateurish feel despite the presence of several well-known actors. I wonder if you rewatched it, if you would still give it 4 stars. Patrick, your enthusiastic endorsement certainly had me expecting more from it than this film delivered. Anyone interested in an intelligent and witty alternative to big budget summer spectacles need look no farther.
In the end Oscar learns a valuable life lesson while providing many laughs along the way.
#Tadpole movie sex full
The delicate plot is balanced with pathos and never allowed full exploitation. Not only does this movie have a finely written script, on top of that the performances, most notably in the facial expressions of the cast as they react to the situations around them, are dead-on hilarious. When he announces that the score is 15-40 she says "That's a ratio you seem particularly fond of." When his father and stepmother discover his affair with their forty-year-old friend his father says it sounds very 'The Graduate' to which his stepmother retorts, "Yes, except that Oscar hasn't graduated yet." In another scene Oscar plays tennis with his stepmother. When Oscar's father asks him if he was hanging out last night in the village with all the hippies, Oscar replies there aren't any hippies in the village anymore, only bankers. Tadpole has a grainy and low-budget look but this doesn't keep it from being one of the freshest and tightly paced comedies to come along in quite a while. This relative newcomer is so good that for his performance as Oscar he deserves one. He also has a one-night fling with her best friend (a scene stealing Bebe Neuwirth).Īaron Stanford, although in his early twenties, passes credibly as a high school sophomore. In fact Oscar is in love with his stepmother (Sigourney Weaver). He finds girls his own age to be too inexperienced in life to be attractive. He reads Voltaire and speaks a fluent French. Oscar, the son of a Columbia professor (John Ritter) is sophisticated and cultured (albeit very pretentious) far beyond his fifteen years. Tadpole is a funny, quirky coming of age comedy set on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Bebe Neuwirth and Aaron Stanford in Tadpole.
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