It ends with unseemly haste, it underlines its points too obviously, and its camera moves when it should be still. Robinson." The film has other problems than credibility. I never really believed Oscar lusted after Eve the woman, but only after Eve the plot point-the archetypal older woman descended in an unbroken line from "Mrs. If Oscar were not forever speaking French and quoting Voltaire, we might see his passion for what it is, the invention of the filmmakers. The difference is that Stillman was seriously intrigued by his young characters, and "Tadpole" uses Oscar primarily as an excuse for transgressive lust. 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. 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. It was even less credible that Eve, for a split-second, actually seems to be considering Oscar's desire seriously. The rest of the movie seems perfunctory and derivative, and although I could believe that Oscar would find Eve attractive, I could not quite believe the labored conversations they have, in which he is talking on one level and she on another. Neuwirth is really very good here, and the scene supplies the one moment when the movie seems sure of what it wants to do, and how to do it. True, the dinner scene has its moments, as Oscar ( Aaron Stanford) squirms, his lover Diane ( Bebe Neuwirth) grins wickedly, his stepmother Eve ( Sigourney Weaver) keeps up the conversation, and his father Stanley ( John Ritter) practices a suave cluelessness which is his strategy for dealing with life. "Tadpole" wants only to be a low-rent "Graduate" clone.ĭoes it succeed on that level? Not really. But "Lovely & Amazing" is about events that happen in a plausible world (the adult is actually arrested). I know I praised "Lovely & Amazing," which also features a romance between an adult woman and a teenage boy. I know there is even a lighthearted mention of the laws involved. I am, I realize, hauling political correctness into a movie where it is not wanted.
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