3/10
Digger has all the makings of a massive hit. It has Tom Cruise. Plot twists. Big budget. Satirical commentary. Yet somehow, it fails to deliver on every front. Now, it’s on track to become one of the biggest box-office flops in history.
One of the year’s most ambitious releases, Digger alternates between two plotlines, a structure that requires constant attention just to understand the complicated narrative. Beyond the surface-level comedy, the film satirizes the climate crisis, corrupt governments, and how humans evade uncomfortable truths through comedy. However, despite its ambition, the movie faces one major flaw: it’s exceptionally boring.
The film opens on Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), an extraordinarily wealthy oil tycoon, and his scraggly cat, Maggy, who looks like she could fall dead at any second. Clearly more concerned with his pet than his multibillion-dollar company, Rockwell ignores several warnings about dangerous methane levels beneath his Greenland oil field. The movie escalates when an explosion on the rig dislodges a massive ice shelf—sending it straight towards Europe, and threatening to trigger a cascade of tsunamis on European cities.
After the incident, President Compson (John Goodman) pays Rockwell a visit, a scene that ought to carry some weight but plays as oddly unserious. The dialogue seems lifted from an episode of South Park, but never lands. I mean, we learn the president is actively dying of butt cancer. Yes, butt cancer. The absurdity is clearly deliberate, but paired with sluggish pacing, it is an unbearable draining of the viewer’s attention and energy.
Just when the film seems to be going nowhere, it’s revealed that everything so far has been a rehearsal for a play. Cruise, it turns out, has not been playing Digger Rockwell but the actor portraying him, Curtis Markson, whose daughter disappeared in a plane crash. While this twist explains the film’s earlier absurdity, it doesn’t excuse the plot’s dullness. The disappearance of Markson’s daughter, a major plot point the film repeatedly stresses, is never fully integrated into the main story. It ultimately feels like a whole bunch of nothing.
As the play’s rehearsal moves along, a second, even larger ice shelf poses a world-altering threat. At the climax of the story, Markson, troubled with the play’s comedic exaggeration of fascism, confronts the director. It’s then revealed that the producer of the play, Kenny Rockwell (Jesse Plemons), is actually Digger’s nephew, attempting to satirize his uncle’s faults. However, the reveal feels forced and unconvincing. You’re telling me that this crucial information is revealed because of the lead actors’ fit of anger? Yeah right.
The plot then skips to the show’s opening night, which is a smashing success—but the triumph doesn’t last long. In the movie’s second major twist, speakers announce the end of the play, and the apocalyptic world, full of trash, pollution, and surveillance, is revealed. The revelation accentuates Plemons’ message and does a good job conveying the film’s main theme: that comedy is used to cope with hardships. However, considering the film’s two-hour runtime and complexity, the message feels shallow.
Adding to the film’s short list of victories, Cruise’s performance clearly shines through the overall dullness of the movie, perfectly capturing Digger’s emotional intensity and overall ridiculousness. He brings a refreshing dose of excitement and charisma in certain scenes, almost tricking you into thinking the movie might actually be fun. Aside from Cruise, the other performances are delivered in an intentionally exaggerated way. It just feels awkward and gets tiring quickly.
The movie’s dialogue is often heavy and complex, being used to tackle current issues like climate change, government corruption, and corporate greed. In certain scenes, this style works well as some lines are incredibly memorable. More often than not, though, the style produces clunky and overexplained dialogue. Not only does this make the movie’s central themes feel forced, it also makes it very confusing at times (and yeah, it’s a bit embarrassing to admit we didn’t know what was going on all the time).
With all this said, what really makes Digger so boring is its direction. The colors are washed out, and bleak and dry monologues often spring up right as something interesting happens. This movie doesn’t really have any emotional buildup. Seemingly critical events are either abruptly interrupted by the next scene as though nothing happened, or their tension is killed with a disappointing joke.
Digger is ambitious and at least a potentially interesting movie, but its execution falls flat. It attempts to make satirical social commentary on a variety of topics, but the ideas are never fully developed. In some moments, this is done well, but more often than not, its social commentary feels like it is being forced down our throats. More than anything else, Digger fails to establish a clear reason for its own existence.
Despite its shortcomings, Digger has already made Hollywood history. Less than two weeks after release, it is already considered one of the biggest financial flops in box office history. The movie only grossed $8 million domestically in its opening weekend and is expected to lose up to $250 million dollars. To add even more fuel to the fire, the film was Warner Bros. final release before being acquired by Paramount Skydance. That means the failure of Digger goes further than the purely financial loss. With Digger, Warner Bros. was trying to prove that an original and creative concept could succeed as a blockbuster. Its tremendous flop will only scare large studios from attempting risky projects, encouraging them to expand only established series that guarantee public interest.
Digger admirably attempts to try something new and ambitious, but falls far short of execution. Even worse, the movie’s massive failure signifies a bleak future for the industry. If you haven’t seen Digger, spare yourself the trouble: the play at its center, Fossil Fools, ends with the audience rising to applaud. Unfortunately you will only rise to go to the bathroom.
