Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) is oddly sophisticated at 15. He idolizes Voltaire and is particular about women's hands. He is secretly in love with his stepmother Eve (Sigourney Weaver). He is back at home in NYC from Chauncey Academy for the Thanksgiving weekend. His father (John Ritter) is concerned. Eve's best friend Diane (Bebe Neuwirth) starts a sexual fling with him and tells all her girlfriends.The kid is self-important and not very compelling. Also he doesn't really look 15 at all which takes away some of the tension. The movie is aiming to be a quirky indie except it's not funny. It's a little particular in its tone but not very interesting. The story is a teen in love with his 40 something stepmother. That could be interesting. This is a twenty something guy in love with Sigourney Weaver. Who isn't?

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.

I have to admit that my expectations were great for this movie. I spent an eternity looking for it on the net and found it in a not-so-good quality. But I have to say it was worth all effort, and made my evening pleasantly light.The story is in my opinion highly applicable even now. The "mature" teenagers that refuse to live the life that is given to them and jump from pond to pond like tadpoles that don't know their place. Besides, gives ground for very good, innocent humor. This is one of "Tadpole"'s most attractive qualities.The acting, needless to say, is a bouquet of flavors bound to suit the bigger part of the audience. The ladies of the movie are astonishing. Sigourney Weaver, with a slightly classy, slightly playful, slightly dramatic air around her makes her every reaction pleasurable. Bebe Neuwirth, on the other hand, is exquisite in her act as the seducer, the naughty middle-aged who likes to play around.For me, however, the debut of Aaron Stanford could not have been a better choice. His role was honest, childish, and playing around the poles. Between his disinterest for ignorant teenage girls and childlike attraction for older, more mature women, he is downright brilliant. An adorable role, and the actor does it much justice. The fact that the movie is short helps the plot, it does not allow it to become overly heavy and somber, lets it play along the edges. The subtlety in the more... tense scenes makes up for the charming character of the movie.And even if you think that the notion of the movie is not much to your liking, let me remind the last and key quote mentioned in it:If we don't find anything pleasant, at least we shall find something new.7/10

Tadpole is a near-perfect examination of the male teenage crush. That young Oscar would choose Sigourney Weaver's charming but inaccessible stepmother over her best friend Bebe Neuwirth's irresistible mixture of free-spirited maturity and pure naughtiness nails his condition beautifully. Unconditional sex whenever he wants and he turns it down! The boy has it bad.The adorable Neuwirth steals the show from a very impressive cast (including the late John Ritter and Robert 'AJ Soprano' Iler). But nothing should be taken away from Stanford who shines in the lead role; by turns irritating and pretentious, vulnerable and confused, and angry and resentful – just like any other smart 15-year-old.Hollywood buffoonery of the American Pie variety will always find a bigger audience but anyone who's been one will know that this is what teenagers are really like. This is a refreshing indie that neither preaches nor outstays its welcome.