Roger Dodger or Men at Their Worst

Thanks to Netflix, I have a seemingly unending stream of movies coming to my door. This weekend I managed to watch two of them.

The first of which was Roger Dodger, a movie where a man who thinks he knows everything about women is confronted with the fact that he might not be 100% on the ball. This is a tired cliche, so many movies have been made where the man who "knows it all" finds out that he doesn't. What elevates Roger Dodger above the rest is the unbelievable dialog and the very daring performance by Campbell Scott.

Campbell Scott plays Roger, a witty ad-copy man whose boss breaks up with him at the beginning of the movie. His 16 year old nephew, Nick, shows up at his office, asking to be shown how to handle women (basically how to get laid). Roger, both in an effort to lick the wound inflicted on his ego and in an honest effort to help his nephew, takes Nick a night full of hopeful debauchery. He drags Nick to a bar, where they do indeed strike up a conversation with two women, neither of whom seem to know what they are getting themselves into. They are both quickly attracted to Nick, who is trying to be suave, but ends up being adorable. The evening ends with one of the ladies (Jennifer Beals) giving Nick his first real kiss, and Roger acting like a jerk, giving the women ample reason to leave.

The rest of the movie is somewhat similar in tone: Roger trying to show Nick how to get laid, firing at him sexist dictums, and truly messing him up along the way. They stop at a brothel, but Roger has a crisis of conscience and stops Nick before things get too far. But of course his conscience isn't enough to stop him from crashing his boss/ex's party and making a true ass out of himself and get himself fired.

What really made this movie work was Roger's utter and complete self-loathing. Be it unresolved issues in his past or his inability to handle issues in his present, he is a character who truly hates himself. However, his large and powerful ego doesn't let this stop him from trying to turn his nephew into a mini version of himself. By the end of the movie, he's lost his girlfriend, his job, possibly the awe of his nephew and quite probably his own self-respect. Yet, we find him coaching Nick and his friends on the finer points of picking up women in the lunchroom cafeteria. When Nick uses the "skills" his uncle has given him on the most desirable girl in the school, we aren't sure if we should be delighted for him that he's getting the girl, or dismayed that yet another smooth-talking guy has entered the scene. Personally, I'm still wondering how to feel.