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Tadpole
Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 31 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 31
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 31
  3. Negative: 0 out of 31
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  1. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    100
    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.
  2. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    100
    It's a funny, fearless, poignant, spectacular performance. Come to think of it, those words could well apply to the entirety of Tadpole.
  3. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    100
    Doesn't need the passage of time to become a classic. It's one already.
  4. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    90
    Tadpole may be small, but it's something special -- a cheeky comedy knockout.
  5. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    90
    A smart sex comedy that successfully swims upstream to spawn and score.
  6. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    88
    An irreverent and witty comedy in which the events aren't predictable but are well paced.
  7. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    88
    Has nearly perfect pitch.
  8. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    83
    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.
  9. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    83
    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.
  10. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Jessica Winter
    80
    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.
  11. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    80
    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).
  12. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    75
    Armed with a witty script, Winick and the actors so confidently ply the Oedipal waters that the comedy seems sweetly chaste.
  13. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    75
    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.
  14. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    75
    Witty, adult treatment of an offbeat subject: a pubescent boy's infatuation with an older woman.
  15. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    75
    Oscar's life has the potential to become a Greek tragedy, but Winick keeps things light enough that it resolutely stays a comedy.
  16. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    75
    Neuwirth vamps up a storm: She's like some silent-screen hellion sending lust rays out of bemused eyes.
  17. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Ron Wells
    70
    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.
  18. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
    70
    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.
  19. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    70
    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.
  20. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Luke Y. Thompson
    70
    Overcomes its visual hideousness with a sharp script and strong performances.
    All this critic's reviews
  21. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    70
    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]
    All this critic's reviews
  22. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Loren King
    63
    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.
  23. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    63
    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.
  24. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    60
    The witty coming-of-age film is marred by an uneven, digitally shot look, a disservice to its first-rate cast.
  25. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Joshua Rothkopf
    60
    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.
  26. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    50
    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.
  27. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    50
    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.
  28. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    50
    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.
  29. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    50
    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.
  30. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    50
    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.
  31. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    40
    This is, alas, one weary ride--77 minutes that sometimes feel like that many hours.
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