Chris Abraham

By the end of Roger Dodger, I was as prone to puking as the characters. I might wake up with an hysterical hangover.

What a foul reflection of what being a man means to too many urban men; what a foul reflection of what it means to be single in the city.

Actors include Campbell Scott, Jesse Eisenberg, Isabella Rossellini, Elizabeth Berkley, and Jennifer Beals — all of whom did a smashing job of giving me hysterical drunkenness, hysterical nausea, and an hysterical hangover.

“Set against the bright lights of Manhattan, a tale which takes a comic, urbane look at the modern male ego at war in the singles scene trenches. Roger Swanson is a hopelessly cynical advertising copywriter with a razor-sharp wit who believes he has mastered the art of manipulating women. But Roger’s seemingly foolproof world of smooth talk and casual sex begins to unravel when he is paid a surprise visit by his teenager nephew, Nick. Hoping to settle, once and for all, the issue of his virginity, Nick begs Roger to school him in the art of seducing women. Welcoming the challenge, Roger guides Nick through the city’s wild nightlife for an all-night crash course, only to realize that he–the adult–still has something to learn about what women, and men, really want.”

Amazon.com
Campbell Scott bristles, burns, and sneers as Roger, a would-be smoothie who gets jilted by his older lover (who also happens to be his boss at an advertising agency). When his teenage nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) appears at his office the next day, hoping for lessons in how to deal with the ladies, Roger uses his nephew partly as a foil, partly as a prop as he vents his anger and unhappiness on women in a scathing tour of bars and parties. A sharp script and multidimensional performances make Roger Dodger more than a standard war-of-the-sexes diatribe. Scott (Big Night, The Spanish Prisoner) doesn’t ask for sympathy and doesn’t allow for pity–his award-winning performance as Roger has defiance and dignity, whether the character is spitting bile or humiliating himself. Featuring strong supporting performances from Eisenberg, Isabella Rossellini (Blue Velvet), Jennifer Beals (In the Soup), and (surprise) Elizabeth Berkley (Showgirls). –Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
A smart and sulfurous début from the writer and director Dylan Kidd. Campbell Scott stars as Roger, whose career is in advertising but whose raison d’??tre is the untiring pursuit of sex. (Almost no love is made in the film, yet the craving for it fills every frame.) Having been jilted by his lover (Isabella Rossellini), who also happens to be his boss, Roger goes hunting by night, in the company of his callow nephew (Jesse Eisenberg) from Ohio. The twist is simple enough: the older man has much to teach but even more to learn. Being Roger, however, he refuses to improve, and it’s the bullish, unsentimental drive of the movie that insures its comic kick. The supporting cast, including Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkley, plays nicely off the central monster, but this is Scott’s movie all the way. He is rarely off camera, but he does not abuse that privilege; there is restraint, and far more wit than you’d expect, in his dazzling depiction of a rampage. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker