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Tadpole
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment // R // January 21, 2003
List Price: $29.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie:
A decent effort, "Tadpole" is occasionally entertaining and sharply funny once or twice, but it still suffers from a few fairly serious faults. Nothing about the small project suggests it would be the focus on a bidding war at Sundance, eventually going to Miramax for $6m (it ended up making a little less than half that).
Sort of an indie "Graduate", the film stars Aaron Sanford as Oscar, a prep-school kid who quotes from Voltaire and believes that a woman's best feature are her hands, and older hands show experience and intellect. Oscar doesn't get along that well with his father (John Ritter), but he's in love with Eve (Signorney Weaver), his stepmother. After a night of drinking, he's taken in off the streets by a friend of Eve, Diane (Bebe Neuwirth), a chiropractor who he ends up sleeping with.
Shot in 14 days for $150,000, the film clocks in at only about 75 minutes, which leads to not a great deal of development for the characters or relationships. Although first-time actor Aaron Sanford offers a fine attempt, there's really nothing that sympathetic about this character, who says things like "I'm fatigued" when he tells his father why he doesn't want to give a pretty girl a walk home from his father's party. While it's fine that the character is intelligent and well-read, he seems awfully snotty. The performances are decent, as Neuwirth and Weaver (those looking for a remarkable Weaver performance should check out "The Guys" when it goes to theaters in March) offer a few solid notes in what little screentime they have.
Basically, there's not too much comedy to be mined from the situation, given that not only has it been done before, but it seems unbelivable that Diane would be so eager to tell everyone what happened, given the trouble she'd be in (see "Lovely and Amazing" for that). The situations in the film are pretty standard - Oscar tries to cover up what he did with Diane, leading to an embarassing situation at dinner, etc.
I don't want to make this film sound entirely terrible, but there are flashes of very nice acting in some of the quieter moments, but the film ends too abruptly (although nicely) and only rarely does it successfully offer comedy or drama that's that effective. Some nice New York photography, though, even in low-budget digital video.
The DVD
VIDEO: "Tadpole" is presented by Miramax films in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. Shot in a matter of a couple of weeks on digital video for a very small budget (not to mention reports of disagreements between the director and cinematographer), "Tadpole"'s visuals were apparently cleaned up after Miramax bought the film, but some shots still betray the film's low-budget origin and any quick movement gives that blurred, digital video look.
Aside from that, there really weren't too many flaws with the image. Some minor edge enhancement appeared at times, but it really didn't cause too much irritation. A couple of traces of pixelation showed up, too. A mild amount of grain is present throughout almost the entire feature. Colors looked low-key and slightly smeary, but usually were presented in satisfactory fashion.
SOUND: "Tadpole" is presented by Miramax in Dolby Digital 5.1. The soundtrack starts off promisingly, with some decent ambience in the rear channels for the opening scenes, but after that, everything falls forward into the front speakers, as most of the remainder is dialogue-driven. Audio quality is fine, as the music remained crisp, as did dialogue (although dialogue sounded a bit sharp at times).
EXTRAS: The DVD includes a commentary from producer/director Gary Winnick, who offers a low-key but informative chat about the production. We hear about the origins of the project, the experiences with shooting the film on digital video and some of the obstacles that were a part of the very quick production. Slow at points, but not bad. Other than the commentary, we get a handful of "Sneak Peeks" for other titles such as "Kate and Leopold", "Serendipity", "Importance of Being Earnest" and the highly entertaining "Project Greenlight" series (I ranked the "Project Greenlight" DVD as one of the top 10 of 2002.)
Final Thoughts: "Tadpole" had some moments, but never really rose above "okay", in my opinion. The short length is an issue, as I felt the characters and situations never were really fully formed - maybe a bit more development and I would have been at least somewhat more positive. Miramax's DVD edition does present the digital video feature fairly well, with decent audio/video quality and a commentary. Maybe worth a rental.
A decent effort, "Tadpole" is occasionally entertaining and sharply funny once or twice, but it still suffers from a few fairly serious faults. Nothing about the small project suggests it would be the focus on a bidding war at Sundance, eventually going to Miramax for $6m (it ended up making a little less than half that).
Sort of an indie "Graduate", the film stars Aaron Sanford as Oscar, a prep-school kid who quotes from Voltaire and believes that a woman's best feature are her hands, and older hands show experience and intellect. Oscar doesn't get along that well with his father (John Ritter), but he's in love with Eve (Signorney Weaver), his stepmother. After a night of drinking, he's taken in off the streets by a friend of Eve, Diane (Bebe Neuwirth), a chiropractor who he ends up sleeping with.
Shot in 14 days for $150,000, the film clocks in at only about 75 minutes, which leads to not a great deal of development for the characters or relationships. Although first-time actor Aaron Sanford offers a fine attempt, there's really nothing that sympathetic about this character, who says things like "I'm fatigued" when he tells his father why he doesn't want to give a pretty girl a walk home from his father's party. While it's fine that the character is intelligent and well-read, he seems awfully snotty. The performances are decent, as Neuwirth and Weaver (those looking for a remarkable Weaver performance should check out "The Guys" when it goes to theaters in March) offer a few solid notes in what little screentime they have.
Basically, there's not too much comedy to be mined from the situation, given that not only has it been done before, but it seems unbelivable that Diane would be so eager to tell everyone what happened, given the trouble she'd be in (see "Lovely and Amazing" for that). The situations in the film are pretty standard - Oscar tries to cover up what he did with Diane, leading to an embarassing situation at dinner, etc.
I don't want to make this film sound entirely terrible, but there are flashes of very nice acting in some of the quieter moments, but the film ends too abruptly (although nicely) and only rarely does it successfully offer comedy or drama that's that effective. Some nice New York photography, though, even in low-budget digital video.
The DVD
VIDEO: "Tadpole" is presented by Miramax films in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. Shot in a matter of a couple of weeks on digital video for a very small budget (not to mention reports of disagreements between the director and cinematographer), "Tadpole"'s visuals were apparently cleaned up after Miramax bought the film, but some shots still betray the film's low-budget origin and any quick movement gives that blurred, digital video look.
Aside from that, there really weren't too many flaws with the image. Some minor edge enhancement appeared at times, but it really didn't cause too much irritation. A couple of traces of pixelation showed up, too. A mild amount of grain is present throughout almost the entire feature. Colors looked low-key and slightly smeary, but usually were presented in satisfactory fashion.
SOUND: "Tadpole" is presented by Miramax in Dolby Digital 5.1. The soundtrack starts off promisingly, with some decent ambience in the rear channels for the opening scenes, but after that, everything falls forward into the front speakers, as most of the remainder is dialogue-driven. Audio quality is fine, as the music remained crisp, as did dialogue (although dialogue sounded a bit sharp at times).
EXTRAS: The DVD includes a commentary from producer/director Gary Winnick, who offers a low-key but informative chat about the production. We hear about the origins of the project, the experiences with shooting the film on digital video and some of the obstacles that were a part of the very quick production. Slow at points, but not bad. Other than the commentary, we get a handful of "Sneak Peeks" for other titles such as "Kate and Leopold", "Serendipity", "Importance of Being Earnest" and the highly entertaining "Project Greenlight" series (I ranked the "Project Greenlight" DVD as one of the top 10 of 2002.)
Final Thoughts: "Tadpole" had some moments, but never really rose above "okay", in my opinion. The short length is an issue, as I felt the characters and situations never were really fully formed - maybe a bit more development and I would have been at least somewhat more positive. Miramax's DVD edition does present the digital video feature fairly well, with decent audio/video quality and a commentary. Maybe worth a rental.
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