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ROGER DODGER Send This Review to a Friend
A particularly enjoyable offering at Toronto International Film Festival 2002 prior to its current commercial release was "Roger Dodger," a charming, amusing and revealing tale involving a teenager's request to his womanizing uncle to show him how to get girls and lose his virginity. Off the uncle and his nephew go into Manhattan at night to accomplish the quest. The joke tinged with sadness is that the uncle's world is collapsing as women find him a turn-off while the innocence of the novice appeals to them.
Campbell Scott has a meaty, mostly unsympathetic but nonetheless fascinating role as Roger, the uncle. He talks like a know-it-all and regales his advertising co-workers with his theories about men and women and their relationships, and predicts that when artificial insemination is the rule, men will be reduced to becoming powerless. Writer director Dylan Kidd, who makes an auspicious breakthrough with this wise and witty film, has written very sharp dialogue for Roger. Beneath the bravado is a desperate man who is becoming an emotional basket case.
Jesse Eisenberg, a very talented young actor, proves winsome as Nick, the nephew, who is very open and a 16-year-old with kind instincts as opposed to most of his uncle Roger's behavior. Roger shows Nick how to get two attractive women interested when they visit a bar, with Nick beeing hustled in unobtrusively because he is under age. The women, played engagingly by Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkley, are turned off by Roger's wise-guy brashness, but intrigued by Nick's unabashed innocence, and there is a sensuous scene in which Beals as Sophie demonstrates to Nick what a real kiss is like. But, especially with Roger behaving obnoxiously, the women are not about to go off and bed the teenager. In his dreams.
On a roll with the casting, Kidd is fortunate to have Isabella Rossellini as the uncle's boss with whom he has been sleeping. It's a switch--a woman toying with one of her male employees and dismissing him when she no longer can stand him, instead of the other way around. Rossellini is especially beautiful in the close-ups, and she is also impressive in the group at the outset as she looks incredulously at what Roger is spewing. Her face cues our reactions.
The bright dialogue is candid and explicit, even shocking at times. Kidd's photographic approach is to use a hand-hand camera and bounce around from person to person to give a sense of reality, particularly in certain portions. Some unaccustomed to the style may find the hand-held gambit slightly dizzying, but Kidd doesn't overdo it and uses the camera (Joaquin Baca-Asay is the director of photography) with purpose so that the result is a convincing of-the-moment film that pulls us in visually and topically.
The overall approach is fresh and original, and "Roger Dodger" leads us to thoughts about preconceptions in attitudes of the sexes toward one another. It is bound to bring back adult memories of teenage angst about sex and most likely will lead some women to ponder male behavior. Above all, "Roger Dodger" turns the corner so that even while it is sad story in one respect it is consistently smart and entertaining as the uncle leads his nephew through the long night. An Artisan Entertainment release.
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