Rodger Dodger is a movie about an asshole. I don't mean its main character is an anti-hero. I mean he's an asshole.
Rodger (Campbell Scott) is an advertising copywriter, introduced to us through an extended, pseudo-intellectual diatribe to his co-workers and boss over lunch about man's emasculation through the advance of technology and how women eventually won't need men for anything but moving furniture. You see, we're supposed to see Roger as a BAD BOY and be titillated at his POLITICALLY INCORRECT opinions. Then after establishing him as the jerk you secretly wish you could be, we' re supposed to feel sorry for him when we find out he's been sleeping with his boss and she's tossing him aside like a handbag that's gone out of style. That's followed by Rodger trying to work out his self-loathing by provoking women into disliking him.
The Rodger we're introduced to could have become a very interesting character. He's a smart guy who thinks he has great insight into other people but has no self knowledge. He won't recognize or consider his own feelings and can't understand how his inner anger and insecurity and fear make him act like a jerk. But then Roger's teenage nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) shows up, and the film becomes about Nick asking Roger's help in getting laid. So, we get a new story about how Nick's honest, heartfelt innocence contrasts with and tries to survive Roger's jaded, hollow, sexist, skanky guidance to hitting on and bedding women.
The problem with Rodger Dodger, though, isn't that it's a movie about an asshole. It's that it's never willing to fully commit. It wants Roger to be both smugly charming and socially inadequate. It wants him to talk and act like a womanizing perv, yet still be someone who knows something about what women like and want. It wants him to be a guy who leaves his 16 year old nephew to take advantage of one of Roger's drunk female co-workers, yet also be the guy who wants to save Nick from a first sexual experience he'll always regret.
You can tell this is a movie that's conflicted by the very opening credits. Campbell Scott and Jesse Eisenberg are the stars of the film, but it's the actresses who get listed first. It's as though Writer/Director Dylan Kidd is saying "I made a movie about this sexist asshole and imply that some of the terrible things he believes about women are true, but I'm really socially enlightened! See? I gave the actresses top billing!"
The film's ending also tries to stand as a rebuke to the creepy, sleazy concepts of manhood that underlie the entire story. But it attempts to do so by contending that there's virtually no practical difference between normal, health male behavior and being a sexist asshole.
Rodger Dodger is like someone deliberately set out to make a provocative, controversial film about Man's real agenda toward Woman but after coming up with the perfect character for that story, the filmmaker just pussed out. It's a movie that wants people to think it's shocking without really daring to genuinely shock.
Rodger (Campbell Scott) is an advertising copywriter, introduced to us through an extended, pseudo-intellectual diatribe to his co-workers and boss over lunch about man's emasculation through the advance of technology and how women eventually won't need men for anything but moving furniture. You see, we're supposed to see Roger as a BAD BOY and be titillated at his POLITICALLY INCORRECT opinions. Then after establishing him as the jerk you secretly wish you could be, we' re supposed to feel sorry for him when we find out he's been sleeping with his boss and she's tossing him aside like a handbag that's gone out of style. That's followed by Rodger trying to work out his self-loathing by provoking women into disliking him.
The Rodger we're introduced to could have become a very interesting character. He's a smart guy who thinks he has great insight into other people but has no self knowledge. He won't recognize or consider his own feelings and can't understand how his inner anger and insecurity and fear make him act like a jerk. But then Roger's teenage nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) shows up, and the film becomes about Nick asking Roger's help in getting laid. So, we get a new story about how Nick's honest, heartfelt innocence contrasts with and tries to survive Roger's jaded, hollow, sexist, skanky guidance to hitting on and bedding women.
The problem with Rodger Dodger, though, isn't that it's a movie about an asshole. It's that it's never willing to fully commit. It wants Roger to be both smugly charming and socially inadequate. It wants him to talk and act like a womanizing perv, yet still be someone who knows something about what women like and want. It wants him to be a guy who leaves his 16 year old nephew to take advantage of one of Roger's drunk female co-workers, yet also be the guy who wants to save Nick from a first sexual experience he'll always regret.
You can tell this is a movie that's conflicted by the very opening credits. Campbell Scott and Jesse Eisenberg are the stars of the film, but it's the actresses who get listed first. It's as though Writer/Director Dylan Kidd is saying "I made a movie about this sexist asshole and imply that some of the terrible things he believes about women are true, but I'm really socially enlightened! See? I gave the actresses top billing!"
The film's ending also tries to stand as a rebuke to the creepy, sleazy concepts of manhood that underlie the entire story. But it attempts to do so by contending that there's virtually no practical difference between normal, health male behavior and being a sexist asshole.
Rodger Dodger is like someone deliberately set out to make a provocative, controversial film about Man's real agenda toward Woman but after coming up with the perfect character for that story, the filmmaker just pussed out. It's a movie that wants people to think it's shocking without really daring to genuinely shock.