zif ofoz You know you are watching a winner when you find yourself hating the lead characters, feeling sorry for another, and getting mad at yet more. In my book if you get emotionally involved with a story, the story is good!This movie covers some darker sides of life and is expertly symbolized through the photography. Many scenes are dark, shadowy, and out of focus. When we are in Rogers world everything is fuzzy, dark, ill defined, and turbulent. Nick willfully jumps into his uncles lifestyle believing he's experiencing life. We (the viewers) know otherwise, but Nick is unwilling to jump off the sinking ship of his uncles life. When we enter Nicks world after he goes back home, suddenly all is bright and colorful. And we see how out of place Roger is in Nicks world.The last five minutes of the film is the defining moments of Rogers character. He has never grown up, he's still sophomoric as seen how he relates to Nicks friends. Physically an adult, mentally still a bombastic sophomore.An excellent movie for film lovers!

MBunge 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.

Jackson Booth-Millard This film did start pretty boring and I didn't really understand what the big deal was, apart from the meaning of the title, but as it went on I found what a good film it is. Basically Roger "Roger Dodger" Swanson (Campbell Scott) has lost his lover and job from Joyce (Isabella Rossellini), but he is still and smooth-talking towards friends, and especially women. His evening does change though when he is paid a surprise visit by his nephew Nick (Cursed's Jesse Eisenberg). Hoping to settle, once and for all, the issue of his virginity, Nick begs Roger to school him in the art of seducing women. He takes him to the three possible places to get his chance, an adults bar where he and Roger chat up Andrea (Showgirls' Elizabeth Berkley) and Sophie (Jennifer Beals), a friend's party with drunk guests, and a secret escort place. Nick does not lose his virginity, but when he leaves Roger certainly needs to learn what women, and men, really want. Very good!

bob_bear Given that Roger behaves like nothing more than a bitchy queen all the way through, why am I expected to believe that he is in anyway desirable to women? Acidic, manipulative, self-seeking...just a revolting personality...and yet the director somehow expects us to want to spend time in his company. The best part of 2 hours, in fact. 2 minutes would be too long!! That his New York cronies appear to find his dinner party repartee amusing says as much about them as it does about him. Personally, I would cross the room to avoid his supercilious clap-trap and I'm not remotely interested in a group of vacuous trendies who would fan his ego. Hence, I don't care about the characters. And, in so not doing, I don't care at all.Even the introduction of the "nephew" couldn't inject heart. The film is all about word-play - being perceived to be clever-clever - whilst having no heart at all.Watching this film was an empty and vaguely depressing experience.