Tadpole (2002)
At 70 some-odd minutes, "Tadpole"
barely has time to give you a plot and some teen angst
musings. Yet somehow it manages to throw in some meditations
on Voltaire and some subtitled French as well. To
bad it can't achieve anything close to a real theme,
idea or intelligent conception. And luckily it is
also incapable of adding much more inappropriate comedy.
Truly, viewing this film as a comedy
of sorts, as director and somewhat screenwriter Gary
Winick tries to present it, is just revolting. I realize
that this is supposedly covered thematically by the
inclusion of the Voltaire quotes (which pop up annoyingly
throughout the movie) which suggests that life and
love and all seriousness is, in fact, comedic. To
me there is nothing amusing or humorous about a 15
year old boy in love with his 40 year old stepmother.
Love is rarely comedic when you are in it. To suggest
that we watch this film as indifferent voyeurs is
cruel. To suggest that what the protagonist teen male
is going through is humorous or even absurd undermines
the very essence of the film. It's dumb.
Perhaps Winick and his cohorts felt
that if they presented this film as truly realistic
and serious that it would fall flat. Maybe they were
afraid critics would lambast the film as pretentious.
So what? Teen angst is pretentious. It based on the
pretense that anything romantic you go through as
a teenager is deeply important. And we all know that
it truly is. Painfully so.
Maybe that's why Winick and his
partners in crime here (and what they do throughout
9/10th's of this movie is a crime) decide to play
sappy music when their protagonist, 15 year old Oscar,
sees his stepmother for the first time in months and
she seemingly moves in slow-mo as their eyes meet.
Regardless, "Tadpole" redeems itself
in the final reel. The finale' and epilogue to this
film are remarkably poignant and perfect. It's too
bad we get such a cacophonous symphony which goes
on forever before it ends on all the right notes.
Aaron Stanford (in actuality a 25
year old whose appeared on TV's "Third Watch") plays
15 year old Oscar with real verisimilitude. He's no
Jesse Eisenberg (of "Roger Dodger") but he's damn
good. Sigourney Weaver also does quite well. And John
Ritter has his best role in aeons. Bebe Neuwirth is
stuck in a thankless role and so, she gets no thanks
from me. Her senseless and insensitive "older woman"
resounds with a cliched idiocy that could only come
out of a scriptwriter's word processor. I'd expect
Neuwirth to either be able to make something resonate
out of this character or to have been wise enough
to pass on the role. I guess she was lightheaded and
still smarting from getting left out of "Chicago."
Winick, who works in digital video
here. Does some things nice, and some things not so
nice. He can often create a mood and score it effectively.
Then again, he can also ham it up and play out angst
for laughs. Much of the time, his film has exactly
the wrong tone. Only the smart performances from Stanford,
Weaver and Ritter save him.
"Tadpole" didn't get a very wide
release theatrically. It's doubtful it will do much
better on DVD. It was eclipsed by many other films
that dealt with teenage boys and their different angsts
in 2002. It was eclipsed by "Igby Goes Down," "Roger
Dodger," and "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" among
others. And rightly so.
Note:
Viewed on a VHS tape provided by
a friend in February 2002. This was a screener the
video distributor usually gives to video sales outlets
to encourage them to carry the tape.
