Rodger Dodger
Dylan Kidd’s debut as a writer and director is a guide to picking up women, which could easily be soulless, but is not. Rodger Dodger oversimplifies its issues and at times is too didactic, yet ithas a real compassion for its characters and offers a humane message to those looking to be schooled in the art of “the game.”
Rodger Dodger is named after the lead character, Rodger (Campbell Scott), who received Rodger Dodger as a nickname because he could talk his way out of anything as a kid. Indeed, he does possess the gift of the gab. Yet how far can his words take him? This is the central question of the film, and we soon find out that they cannot take him as far as he believes.
Besides putting too much faith in his words, Rodger puts too little of it in women. He is utterly surprised when Joyce (Isabella Rossellini), his boss and bedmate, dumps him. After sleeping with him one more time she casts him aside for what we will discover is another young man. Rodger sneaks out of her condo that night with one of her satin scarves, one of the many gestures that will belie the heartache under his cool and composed surface. Too broken to go home he stops off at a bar, where he maliciously insults two women’s hopes. His stories are logically sound, but perhaps off the mark. He invents a narrative about a boss who will dump one of the women, which reflects back upon his loss.
Into this mess of repressed pain and misogyny, Rodger’s nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) unwittingly stumbles. Nick, a shy and sensitive teenager, has come to the big apple to ask his Uncle Rodger for tips on picking up women. He has heard that Rodger is “quite the ladies man.” Rodger obliges him and takes Nick out on the town for an overbearing crash course on perceiving sexuality and obtaining sex. Out on the street, cars and people whiz past, and the immediacy and chaos of New York and their situations is captured with the film’s us of a hand held camera. Nick listens intently to Rodger’s advice, yet cannot follow it entirely, because his sense of right and wrong clashes with it.
Rodger takes Nick to a bar where they meet Sophie (Jennifer Beals) and Andrea (Elizabeth Berkley). Rather than Rodger, it is Nick who captivates them, and not with his wit, but with his sincerity. Instead of channeling the conversation towards a sexual goal, he prefers to talk about matters of the heart. His mother keeps a bottle of hard liquor at the bottom of her laundry basket. This on top of his earnestness, gains Andrea’s affection. It also turns her on. In a rather unconvincing and embarrassing scene, she drops a straw to the ground as an invitation for Nick to go down under the table: one example of Kidd’s many sophomoric compliments to Nick’s character.
Rodger has no idea how well things are working out for his nephew so he continues trying to push him in the wrong direction. As their evening progresses, the women grow hotter to Nick and absolutely frigid towards Rodger. Kidd’s guide-film is telling us that women want men who listen rather than manipulate, a rather comforting lesson for the shy, but a cliché all the same. Indeed, we cannot count on this film to handle complex issues.
Eventually, and to no surprise, Rodger upsets the women enough for them to leave. With no women for either of them, they continue their search by attending a party at Joyce’s, where Nick again displays his sensitivity towards women, and Rodger childishly lashes out at Joyce and her new boy. What follows is a descent into a brothel, which Kidd depicts as a dark and labyrinthine realm of depravity. Right when it seems that Nick is going to bed down with a prostitute, Rodger pulls him out of the room in an act that saves Nick’s purity and redeems Rodger.
The film closes with Rodger giving Nick and his friends a pep talk on approaching women. There is an apparent change in his focus as he mentions looking beneath girl’s sweaters for their hearts rather than their undergarments. The coda feels inorganically hinged at the end, but it is a reminder of the relationship between Kidd and his viewers. He treats us like inexperienced teenagers, which can be offensive, yet, on the positive side, we can sometimes benefit from his reminders. Kidd warns us of the dangers of sexism and reassures us of the value of our uniqueness to others.
Because of Scott’s A acting, and the witty dialogue, the movie, despite its clichés and oversimplifications deserves a B -.
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