Tadpole (2002)
Directed by Gary Winick
Beautiful, sophisticated women are all over Oscar Grubman. He is sensitive and compassionate, speaks French fluently, is passionate about Voltaire, and thinks the feature that tells the most about a woman is her hands. On the train home from Chauncey Academy for the Thanksgiving weekend, Oscar confides in his best friend that he has plans for this vacation--he will win the heart of his true love. But there is one major problem--Oscar's true love is his stepmother Eve.
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It's more like a reversed "The Graduate" done by a less talented Wasp Woody Allen.
Too much has happened in the arena of sexual politics since " The Graduate ," and I kept thinking that since Oscar was 15 and his stepmother and her friend were about 40, this plot would have been unthinkable if the genders had been reversed.
The story, slyly reminiscent of predecessors including "The Graduate", makes its own mark not only because 15-year old Oscar isn't one, but through a style of effervescent charm, a lighthearted script crafted by screenwriters Niels Mueller and Heather McGowan and tightly directed (78 minutes!) by Gary Winnick for laughs stemming from human foibles -- a comedy of errors in modern terms.
Maybe that's because it has the pedigree of an instant classic such as "The Graduate" and the resounding reminiscence of Wes Anderson's 1998 charmer "Rushmore".
Zingers are plentiful, especially when it comes to the May-December relationship, with catty references to "The Graduate" and 40-15 tennis scores.
Scenarios like this one end up being the latest scandal about town, rather than being prime material for a comedy— The Graduate and Rushmore have explored this area.
Though this film doesn't have the bite of "Rushmore," the character that Aaron plays is most like Jason Schwartzman's.
"Tadpole" is nothing like "Rushmore," to which it is often inexplicably compared.
Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller's script, helmed by Gary Winick (who won Best Director at the festival), unavoidably summons shades of Harold and Maude and Spanking the Monkey, but Oscar most strongly suggests Rushmore's Max Fischer to the brownstone born.
Maybe that's because it has the pedigree of an instant classic such as "The Graduate" and the resounding reminiscence of Wes Anderson's 1998 charmer "Rushmore".
Scenarios like this one end up being the latest scandal about town, rather than being prime material for a comedy— The Graduate and Rushmore have explored this area.
His character is a few degrees this side of Max Fisher, the protagonist of “Rushmore,” and Stanford plays him with realistic teen-age confusion.
The hand-held camerawork is far too shaky for its own good, and pointlessly so, compared to, say, the deliberately unsteady look of Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives.
Like Stillman's " Metropolitan ," " Barcelona " and " The Last Days of Disco ," it gives us a hero who is articulate, multi-lingual, sophisticated beyond his years, and awesomely self-confident.
There’s no doubt that Winick has spent a lot of time reading the Woody Allen Guide To Angst-Ridden New York Comedy and his film also owes something to Whit Stillman’s films about equally pretentious prep school types (Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco).
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Other film dramas have dealt with the coming of age story, where a young man is introduced to love via an older woman—Summer of '42, for example—or any number of foreign films that introduce young men to adult lust, including the director's cut of Cinema Paradiso, Fellini's Amarcord , and Truffaut's Antoine Doniel series.
The movie, directed by Gary Winick and written by Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller , gives us Woody Allen's " Manhattan " crossed with Whit Stillman's affluent preppies.
Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller's script, helmed by Gary Winick (who won Best Director at the festival), unavoidably summons shades of Harold and Maude and Spanking the Monkey, but Oscar most strongly suggests Rushmore's Max Fischer to the brownstone born.
Stricken with guilt and consumed by the same kind of angst that afflicts Rushmore 's Max, Spanking the Monkey's Ray, and Harold and Maude's Harold--call it the "Oedipal Complexity" or the "Shagging Mommy Blues"--Oscar attempts to win his elder lady love with charmingly clumsy extended metaphors using scientific terms for parts of the heart and jousting that perhaps the liver would be a better organ shorthand for l'amour.
Like Stillman's " Metropolitan ," " Barcelona " and " The Last Days of Disco ," it gives us a hero who is articulate, multi-lingual, sophisticated beyond his years, and awesomely self-confident.
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Like Stillman's " Metropolitan ," " Barcelona " and " The Last Days of Disco ," it gives us a hero who is articulate, multi-lingual, sophisticated beyond his years, and awesomely self-confident.
There’s no doubt that Winick has spent a lot of time reading the Woody Allen Guide To Angst-Ridden New York Comedy and his film also owes something to Whit Stillman’s films about equally pretentious prep school types (Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco).
Other film dramas have dealt with the coming of age story, where a young man is introduced to love via an older woman—Summer of '42, for example—or any number of foreign films that introduce young men to adult lust, including the director's cut of Cinema Paradiso, Fellini's Amarcord , and Truffaut's Antoine Doniel series.