ROGER DODGER []
Player movie scores. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated R (sexual references, profanity). At the Lincoln Square and the Sunshine.
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‘ROGER Dodger” is a tour-de-force for Campbell Scott as an oh-so-cynical Manhattan ladies’ man whose swaggering bravado scarcely disguises a wounded loser who’s imploding before our eyes.
A thirtysomething advertising man who boasts he makes his living selling useless products by making people feel bad, Roger is a three-martini man who takes pride in swiftly reducing women to vulnerable cultural stereotypes.
But it isn’t working for Roger anymore.
His fiftysomething girlfriend (Isabella Rosellini in a remarkably vanity-free performance), who also happens to be his boss, is trading him in for a younger and less-jaded model.
The unlikely vehicle for Roger’s self-redemption is Nick (newcomer Jesse Eisenberg, brother of Pepsi pitchwoman Hallie), his estranged sister’s 16-year-old son, who drops by unannounced – and takes up his uncle’s offer to help relieve him of his virginity.
The bulk of the film is a remarkable extended sequence set during a happy hour, as the increasingly vulgar Roger thrusts and parries with a couple of dancers (Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkley, both excellent) who give as good as they get.
They quickly size up Roger for the creep that he is, but the women are drawn to Nick’s sincere naiveté, which his uncle surreptitiously encourages him to use as a marketing tool so he can “close the deal” with one of the ladies.
It’s not surprising that Uncle Roger is the one who ends up being the pupil, but the dialogue crackles and you forget at times you’re watching a movie.
Unfortunately, writer-director Dylan Kidd never comes close to matching this duel of wits in the rest of the film, which is shot mostly with a jittery hand-held camera that lends immediacy but occasionally induces vertigo.
Overall, the script isn’t as artfully constructed as the thematically similar “Tadpole,” especially a confrontation between Roger and his boss at a party and a rather pat – if undeniably amusing – ending that sends Roger home a chastened man.
But thanks to Scott’s charismatic Roger and Eisenberg’s sweet nephew, “Roger Dodger” is one of the most compelling variations on “In the Company of Men.”