Featured attraction
Oscar (Stanford), 15, is in love for the very first time with, appropriately enough, a woman named Eve. What's not appropriate is that she's his step-mom, a 40-plus medical researcher who studies the human heart. "The heart is simple," Eve (Weaver) tells him, unaware of his crush on her. "Fixing it is complicated."
Oscar's heart will need serious mending before Tadpole, a slight but appealing romantic farce, is over. As it follows the travails of its precocious protagonist—who quotes Voltaire and dismisses teen girls as lacking depth—the film captures Oscar's adolescent need to wallow in his own emotions. While Stanford (25 in real life) and Weaver perform laudably, slinky Neuwirth steals the show. Playing a forty-something chiropractor who is Eve's best pal, she ends up trysting a night away with the virginal Oscar. Amusing though this all is, one has to ask, what if it were about a 15-year-old girl? (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Stays afloat
