Roger Dodger (2002)

Review by All Movie Guide
Roger Dodger is an impressive debut for writer/director Dylan Kidd. Kidd has written a lot of sharp dialogue, gets strong performances from his accomplished cast, and he keeps the action moving at a nice, jaunty pace. Campbell Scott (Singles, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle), as the title character, again demonstrates his adeptness at playing amusingly loquacious men. Roger's apparent belief that he can talk himself out of -- or into -- anything provides a great deal of the film's humor. Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkley are smart and sympathetic as the women pursued by Roger and his young nephew, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg), and Kidd invests these characters with the necessary depth to give Roger's manipulative games an unpleasant edge. Eisenberg is a likeable presence, and believable as an adolescent of above-average intellect and sensitivity, who's in danger of letting his horniness get the better of him. Unfortunately, Kidd goes a bit overboard in providing Nick with goofy eccentricities. He meditates to calm himself down ("Why should you calm down? You're a teenager," notes Roger). Okay, but he carries around instructions for his body to be cryogenically frozen? That comes across as something only a movie teen would do. The reason he gives to Roger for his appearance in New York will be transparent to even the most dimwitted of viewers, so it's surprising that the hyper-perceptive Roger can't see through it. Some of the humor in the film is a bit forced, and while Roger proves himself quite slimy over the course of the narrative, Kidd, apparently at a loss as to how to resolve things, makes him a bit too cute and cuddly in the end. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide