Rodger Dodger

Writer/director Dylan Kidd’s sumptuous script and actor Campbell Scott’s amazing performance share top billing in this tiny movie about the tiny people who populate New York City’s expensive bars and soulless parties. Scott plays the titular Roger, a hate-filled man whose girlfriend has just dumped him. Using his overwhelming verbal skills to vivisect anyone who crosses his path, Roger falls in with Nick, his 16-year-old nephew who has run away from Ohio in order to get laid. It’s kind of like watching a character from a teen sex comedy who has accidentally wandered into a Bergman film. Nick places himself under his uncle’s tutelage, and together they pull in Sophie (Jennifer Beals) and Andrea (Elizabeth Berkley), two beautiful women who, in a lesser film, would teach them both an important lesson about what women really want. Since this is not a lesser film, things somehow manage to be simultaneously sweet and ugly. Throughout it all the amazing dialogue and spot-on acting make this an entertaining and uncomfortable movie that’s sure to be completely ignored by the Golden Globes. See it now before it’s remade by Disney!