Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum![]()
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The![]()
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star![]()
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The![]()
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The![]()
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An![]()
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox![]()
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo![]()
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The![]()
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The![]()
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D![]()
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Tadpole

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 31 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 11 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by:
Heather McGowan
Niels Mueller
Directed by: Gary Winick
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 19, 2002
DVD: January 21, 2003
Running Time: 78 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for sexual content, mature thematic elements and language
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Aaron Stanford, John Ritter, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Iler, Adam LeFevre, and Peter Appel
A romantic comedy about a precocious young man who falls for an older woman.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: 13 Going on 30 Charlotte's Web The Tic Code
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
It's a funny, fearless, poignant, spectacular performance. Come to think of it, those words could well apply to the entirety of Tadpole.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Doesn't need the passage of time to become a classic. It's one already.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Short and sweet, small and smart, Tadpole is the oasis in the desert of dopey summer blockbusters - an uproarious, sophisticated coming-of-age comedy so flawlessly written, acted and directed it seems practically miraculous.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Tadpole may be small, but it's something special -- a cheeky comedy knockout.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
A smart sex comedy that successfully swims upstream to spawn and score.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
An irreverent and witty comedy in which the events aren't predictable but are well paced.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's an appealing mix of an old Hollywood movie world of Upper East Side sophisticates with the character-driven spontaneity of a modern American indie, all very slight and light but deftly done.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Where ''Rushmore'' surprises and delights with its spiky depiction of sprawling American idiosyncrasy, Tadpole's more urbane, less complicated charms are specifically made in New York City.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jessica Winter
As sweet and unassuming a film as they come, embraces both perspectives -- it's sympathetic to the batty throes of a first infatuation, but affably demurs at indulging them.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Shot in just two weeks with a hand-held digital camera, the movie often looks frayed around the edges. Yet it has a soulful heart and a clear grasp of its rarefied milieu (Manhattan upper-level moneyed academia).
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Stanford and Neuwirth are performers of such nuance that a mere glimpse of his body language and her bawdy language speak volumes about the difference between love and sex, the ideal and the real.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Witty, adult treatment of an offbeat subject: a pubescent boy's infatuation with an older woman.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Armed with a witty script, Winick and the actors so confidently ply the Oedipal waters that the comedy seems sweetly chaste.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Neuwirth vamps up a storm: She's like some silent-screen hellion sending lust rays out of bemused eyes.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Oscar's life has the potential to become a Greek tragedy, but Winick keeps things light enough that it resolutely stays a comedy.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
The great Bebe Neuwirth should apply for a patent on her slow and dirty smile. The scene in which she introduces her new conquest to her girlfriends over tea, and pretty well pimps him to any takers, is worth the price of a ticket. [29 July 2002, p. 92]
Film Threat Ron Wells
Not a film that will change your life. It instead proves that shooting your movie with cheap technology doesn't mean it can't be fun or entertaining. In the end, that's enough.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Though sloppily structured and sometimes dangerously flimsy (not to mention truncated at a mere 78 minutes), Tadpole has an unforced charm that compensates for the absence of more traditional cinematic virtues.
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson
Overcomes its visual hideousness with a sharp script and strong performances.
LA Weekly Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
It requires nothing more of a viewer than quiet complaisance, which is rewarded in turn by pleasant scenery, a few mild laughs, and the dependably involving presence of Weaver and, especially, Neuwirth.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Smart and sophisticated entertainment, whatever its shortcomings, and it deserves to be encouraged. Not the behaviour it portrays, of course; but the worldly common sense of knowing that most people have a secretly ambiguous view of sexual prohibitions, and that this is the fertile ground of great comedy.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Loren King
But as likable as it is, Tadpole is hardly a maturing woman's revenge movie, but another male fantasy -- that of the sexually nurturing mother figure. If only all coming-of-age sexual experiences could be as healthy and wholesome.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
The witty coming-of-age film is marred by an uneven, digitally shot look, a disservice to its first-rate cast.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Joshua Rothkopf
Both Stanford and Neuwirth are excellent in tricky parts, yet screenwriters Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller abruptly end the story just as the characters are arriving at some uncomfortable showdowns.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Tadpole was shot on digital video, and the images often look smeary and blurry, to the point of distraction. Then again, in a better movie, you might not have noticed.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
I praised "Lovely & Amazing," which also features a romance between an adult woman and a teenage boy. But "Lovely & Amazing" is about events that happen in a plausible world (the adult is actually arrested). Tadpole wants only to be a low-rent "Graduate" clone.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The big problem with it is that the setup is treated as just that, a scheme around which many things that are intended to be funny (but aren't very) are packed like ice around a fish.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Written in wisps and watery double-entendres by Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller, and the movie is so benign that its proceedings are beside the point.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
This breezy romantic trifle isn't nearly as clever as it imagines itself to be, but it's smart enough not to take itself too seriously.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
This is, alas, one weary ride--77 minutes that sometimes feel like that many hours.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Yori D. gave it a 10:
Was initially slightly irritated but got over the digital camera shooting. this is not your typical film. it's funny;subtle,adult and thoughtfully f-u-n-n-y.the performances are excellent and loved the quotes and that the film kept it's mood and integrity instead of becoming "dramatic" for the sake of it....special movie that i will recommend with a great big grin.
Nolan B. gave it a 3:
Falls into the same trappings as Igby. This Tadpole never makes it out of the stream.
Brian L. gave it a 10:
A wonderful movie. It's a shame it won't get the attention it deserves. There's not a single boring or dull moment in the entire movie. We need more movies that assume the viewer actually knows something.
Harvey V. gave it a 6:
I know "The Graduate". And "Tadpole" is no "Graduate".
Chad S. gave it a 6:
Aaron Stanford would make an excellent Holden Caulfield. "Tadpole" made me long for a mounting of the J.D. Salinger classic when Oscar(Stanford) roams around the New York exteriors, looking thoughtful and forlorn. Stanford is good as Oscar Grubman but "Tadpole" plays matters too safe when it prevents us from feeling sorry for the potential victim and anger towards the seducer because the filmmakers didn't want the risk of having an unlikable protagonist. "Tadpole" would've been a lot more interesting if Oscar had to deal with the ramifications of his deadly crush. Instead, we get a cute ending to a smart but punch-pulling movie. If Todd Solondz wanted to make an audience-friendly film, yet maintain some of his old edge, it would look an awful like "Tadpole". (If the name Bebe Neuwirth to you is synonymous with Lilith Crane, you have no inkling about her bottomless resevoir of comedic talents.)
Mikey G gave it an 8:
Easily the funniest movie I've seen all year. However, this is intelligent funny. Some people don't get that. Bebe Neuwirth is friggen' hot as the stepmom's best friend! 40 my ass! The actor portraying the title character is very good and reminded me of Topher Grace. Why didn't he get this role? In any case, he does a great job. John Ritter is also excellent as the father. Not long at all, this movie flies by. A bit of nudity would have helped, specially from Bebe. However, this movie is still very worthwhile to check out if you like to laugh with your brain.
Michael F. gave it an 8:
Really really fun, funny, smart and cute. It's a really good indie. It's touching and quick. It really captures that upper east side feeling that I miss so so much from movies. John Ritter is very good. Aaron Standford is great. Sigourney Weaver is fine. Robert Iler is surprisingly terrible, just completely not believable. It's quick and fun.
