THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5,2002
FILM
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 13
Hornby film 'Roger Dodger' investigates male irrelevance
Through seminal works such as Fever FILM SNOB
Through seminal works such as Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About a Boy, the London-based author and music critic Nick Hornby has cleverly and knowingly blown the lid off the mysteries of the male gender. Film adaptations of Hornby's novels hit the mark but there's a problem with the leads that inhibit the hero role. John Cusack in High Fidelity and Hugh Grant in About a Boy are cool and know their characters inside and out but they play similar roles in a lot of their movies. Despite the flaws in the Hornby leads and the way they are embodied by the actors, they're easy to pass off as characters that keep men from seeing too much of themselves.
James Owen
jowen@kansan.com
The new film Roger Dodger is set deep in Hornby territory but because of a small budget or because Hornby decided to be a co-producer, unknown Campbell Scott was chosen as the lead.
Scott plays Roger, a copywriter in Manhattan who loves talking about sex, life and himself. The opening shot of the film is a dizzying roundtable dinner discussion led by Roger, about why men are becoming irrelevant.
Roger says, "Thanks to sperm getting shot into eggs by a needle, the only thing (men) are good for is lifting couches. And someday, when telepathy overcomes gravity, then we will be totally useless even in that area."
The speech wins him applause at the table and almost from the audience. Roger spends the rest of the film attempting to prove his point about the irrelevance of men.
He doesn't so much talk as he hypothesizes about people and then uses the conversation to formulate a theory. This is his strategy with women, anyway, and we see it received with varying results. He can get into bed with his boss (Isabella Rossellini), but his attempts to explain to a woman that an older man won't make up for her father's inattention has predictable results. We know Roger has sex but we never see it. The film establishes early that words, not action, will be the focus.
Of course, a film where the main character has to make points and theorize needs an audience implant in order for it to work. We get Nick (Jesse Eisenberg), Roger's nephew from Ohio. Nick is only 16 and explains that he is in town to tour Columbia. But there's something else on his mind as well. Dad has just left, much to Roger's shock, because Nick has some pretty touchy questions about girls, women, sex, and so on. Well, this is Roger's territory, so
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he decides to get Nick some hands-on experience.
They end up at a bar where they pick up two young professionals (Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkley) who tell Nick about sex from a woman's perspective. Roger and Nick then hop to a rather awkward party where things get slightly out of hand for everyone involved.
Campbell Scott makes a great Hornby man, especially because this is not really a Hornby story. But he is so self-aware that he possesses little cool or charm. Scott acts more like a guy because he has no movie-star looks or bravado to hang on. He uses his talking and his theories as a defense mechanism. Indeed, Roger's attitude and style are so defensive that director Dylan Kidd films Roger's actions as though he were documenting guerrilla warfare. The title refers to his nickname as a child because "he could always talk his way out of being caught."
While the audience laughs at Roger's ideas and sees some purpose to a few of the lessons, they also recognize him as pitiful. Nick, with his young age and inexperience, is able to sift through Roger's B.S. and extract tactics that are actually useful.
The Nick Hornby archetype is not a perfect fit because there are also moments of Richard Linklater and the best of Whit Stillman as well. But Roger Dodger doesn't incorporate pop culture and doesn't try to enhance its stature by using Gen X icons in the role. There's nothing wrong with that, but this film has a vulnerability and an accessibility that Hornby's books have in spades. Perhaps by necessity, that got lost in the film version of those stories.
Roger Dodger relies on its wit and the insecurity of men. Either way, it is a sometimes funny and a sometimes sad look at the way John Cusack and Hugh Grant wannabes function in our "talk more, act less" society.