Film 26 (9/14/2005)

Roger Dodger (2002)

Director: Dylan Kidd

Recommended by: tonguetiedlightning

Has Fentablar seen this before?: No.

I had to think for a while about Roger Dodger. I couldn't decide whether or not I liked it. I can relate to both the primary characters, Roger (Campbell Scott) and Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) - at least to a certain extent.

The film begins with Roger sitting at lunch with his boss and coworkers, extrapolating on a theory about a day when women no longer need men via evolution. This scene essentially sets a tone for Roger's character, both in his perspective on the relationship between men and women as well as showing that he has what is commonly known as the "gift of gab". I can relate to this because I know someone very much like Roger, so he is very believable.

Unexpectedly, Roger's 16-year old nephew, Nick, arrives in New York on a trip to interview with Columbia University. Nick asks Uncle Roger to "help him with the ladies", since his mom (Roger's sister) told him Roger was a ladies' man. The film then becomes about Roger mentoring Nick in this regard - first, how to "check out" a woman without her seeing; eventually, how to get a woman interested. At least, interested enough to go home with you or take you home with her.

So far, nothing really wrong with the plot - the overall dialogue is fairly decent (though Roger's dialogue is superb) and the nightclub/bar settings and music are dead-on with reality.

Then, things slowly start taking a turn - first one thing seems a tad unrealistic to me:

When Roger and Nick are sitting on the benches with Andrea and Sophie, I have a hard time believing that Sophie would actually go so far as to kiss a 16-year old boy just so it could be his first.

But forget that for now. The climax of this film was very unsettling for me:

Nick hasn't been laid and isn't going to be, unless they use Roger's "failsafe". Nick insists and one is left to wonder if he knew prostitution was involved or not - I'm pretty sure he thought it was involved, but of course he has no idea what that entails. Roger must have felt that Nick knew, but it was really upsetting when he actually went through with that. That scene made me despise Roger's character.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I can understand WHY that happened even though I really disagree with what happened. Right now, it seems to me that Roger did that because he childishly wanted to exact some unspoken revenge on his sister for taking care of their dad, which he seemed very upset about.

When push comes to shove with Roger Dodger, this film caused a reaction to me that wasn't due to it being horrible to watch but due to an emotional or moral reaction that was incited by it. This is a good thing. I appreciate films that make you think about them well after you've seen them.

Ratings (scale of 1 to 5):

Plot Effectiveness: 4/5. The only problem I have with the plot of this film is it's denouement. It just didn't seem to fit right, though it tried to.

Cinematography/Shot Selection: 3/5. I'm not really fond of the freeform camera technique when there seems to be a purposefulness behind it. It's ok to use the technique, but it shouldn't be so blatantly obvious.

Overall Acting: 4/5. Campbell Scott was excellent, the rest were fairly good.

Score/Soundtrack: 5/5. Dead on for that sort of nightclub/bar ambience.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

~Fentablar~