- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
40The movie's third act begins a baffling and not-very-believable character turnabout.
-
88Experiencing this film is like hurtling down a verbal slalom.
-
88Mines laughs from the ways in which its antihero's reductive philosophy consistently goes kerflooey in his face, but there's a weary sadness to it as well.
-
63Starts as a tart little lemon drop of a movie and ends up as a bitter pill. I'm glad to have seen it, for I appreciated Campbell Scott's dominant performance and Jesse Eisenberg's breakthrough. But I hope writer-director Dylan Kidd mixes less acid into the next drink he pours.
-
80Kidd has a great ear for dialogue, and he throws in a few unexpected twists. But the real fun is watching an established pro and a newcomer run with the script.
-
75The movie, written and directed by Dylan Kidd, depends on its dialogue, and like a film by David Mamet or Neil LaBute has characters who use speech like an instrument. The screenplay would be entertaining just to read, as so very few are.
-
88Revives the art of smart, scathing movie conversation as it skewers Manhattan's singles scene while providing a goodly number of laughs. Like its subject, the movie may have its prickly moments, but it's awfully fun to watch.
-
100Funny, sad, and skeptical in about equal measures, it announces writer-director Dylan Kidd as a filmmaker with a bright future.
-
80Rookie writer-director Dylan Kidd, late of NYU film school, knows how to get the best out of jittery, handheld camera shots, and he knows how to go for the jugular. Roger is the bleakest comic portrait of misogynist self-delusion we've seen in a long time.
-
83A little too programmed in its despair, but it coasts along on the jagged music of the modern lothario's song.
-
70I was with Roger Dodger all the way until its vile hero had an 11th-hour burst of insight that defied all belief. I didn't buy it, but I do want his therapist's phone number.
-
100It is Scott's work as the savagely articulate Roger, a tireless would-be seducer, bottomlessly self-confident and oblivious to rejection, that is the film's glistening and provocative centerpiece.
-
63In the end, Roger Dodger doesn't really add up to much. Guys can be jerks when they're lonely, or even when they're not. It's not news. But Kidd's version of this truth shows he's a writer worth watching.
-
50The result is a long night of confrontations that feel heavily rehearsed and unlikely. There are some good moments, but I didn't believe any of this.
-
80The dramatic arc of Roger Dodger may be banal, but Kidd manages some marvelous moments.
-
75Thanks 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."
-
88Sly, sophisticated and surprising.
-
75A delight for anyone who loves to absorb dialogue. The movie is almost all talk and no action, and possesses the "feel" (although not the pedigree) of a stage production translated to the screen.
-
75Campbell Scott swings at one of the year's juiciest roles and knocks it out of the park.
-
80There's a maddening ambiguity at the core of writer-director Dylan Kidd's remarkably cynical, and bracingly intelligent, debut movie. It's the kind of thing that is just nasty enough to start arguments in cafes and bars.
-
75Clever, exceptionally well-written film.
-
83Scott owns the film from scene one.
-
70Flags as it heads toward a moralistic ending, complete with a couple of contrived (albeit charged) sexual encounters, but it's heartening that it soars as long as it does.
-
75An unusually smartly written and performed American independent film.
-
90One of the juiciest male characters to pop up in an independent film this year.
-
80There are times when the movie's entertainment value verges on the scandalous. [4 November 2002, p. 110]
-
80Campbell Scott's fiendishly mercurial performance as razor-tongued womanizer Roger is a revelation but it's only one of this nimble film's pleasures.
-
75The final third is slower until a somewhat contrived finale that's still the funniest thing in the movie.
-
70fFts into that weird, dialogue-heavy quasi-genre that includes "In the Company of Men" and "The Business of Strangers" where high-stakes sexual power games mix with cutthroat office politics.
-
30First-timer Dylan Kidd's film isn't Molièrian in its misanthropy, but rather as boneheaded as an hour of talk-radio hobgoblin Tom Leikis.
-
80All three performances are excellent, in their different ways.
-
90Kidd, a first-time writer and director, has created a sophisticated but intriguingly toxic comedy of manners.
-
90Takes both its characters and the audience to the depths, but it's a journey Kidd redeems with wit and fluency and, ultimately, a deeply persistent humanism.