‘Manodrome’ Review: Jesse Eisenberg Glowers His Way Through Reductive Look at Modern Masculinity
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic The first rule of “Manodrome” is you don’t talk about “Fight Club.” “Fight Club” looms large over writer-director John Trengrove’s unsettling second feature, even if no one overtly mentions David Fincher’s provocative late-’90s movie in this dark psychological-thriller-cum-social-critique, which finds the state of masculinity even more fraught than Fincher did a quarter-century ago.
Trengrove, who is gay and hails from South Africa (his 2017 debut “The Wound” was shortlisted for the Oscar international prize), brings a queer sensibility to his otherwise unsatisfying analysis of contemporary manhood, enlisting Jesse Eisenberg to play yet another scrawny white guy seeking outlet for deep wells of festering aggression.
Here, he finds it in a secret society of like-minded dudes, spearheaded by Adrien Brody as a self-appointed father figure who calls himself “Dad Dan,” and who teaches Eisenberg’s character, Ralphie, to “man up.” In what feels like a case of lazy (type)casting, “Manodrome” finds its once-shrimpy star back in “The Art of Self-Defense” mode, embodying yet another variation on his now-familiar stunted/repressed man-boy persona — only this time, Eisenberg has hit the weights, bulging in ways he never did before.
Ralphie dedicates a lot of energy to working out. For him, the gym is like a microcosm of the world at large. It’s worth noting that the only woman to be seen in this space — the female bodybuilder at the front desk — is five times as swole as Ralphie is.
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