SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major spoilers for “Digger,” in theaters now via Warner Bros. When does a bad movie become a fascinating watch? So often the kiss of death for a feature is boredom; that feeling you’ve seen the same story many times before, the actors are checked out, there’s no visual panache.
That’s not the case with “Digger.” While it’s shaping up to be a box office disaster, the movie is anything but dull. Tom Cruise leads the cast in acting to the rafters, DP Emmanuel Lubezki keeps the camera moving and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu injects plenty of swagger in the proceedings.
Unfortunately, the film’s opening — an extended introduction to Cruise’s ambitious oilman Digger Rockwell — is so in-your-face that it sags under the weight. Cruise is in grotesque prosthetics, eager to show us as quickly as possible how uncouth Digger is: He eats from the same can of sardines as his beloved cat, his butt crack is seen in plain view of his maid, his comb-over wisps wildly. It’s a clichéd character surrounded by other bobbling caricatures that enter and exit the rooms of his mansion, flailing wildly as Digger learns that his oil company might have inadvertently caused a climate-based global disaster.
It’s shrill and tired, and despite the best intentions of the filmmakers to cause provocation around environmentalism, it’s about as subtle as Cruise turning to the camera and screaming, “DO YOU GET IT?!?” Ultimately, the poster’s promise of “a comedy of catastrophic proportions” seems more like a threat than a guarantee of “Dr. Strangelove”-esque genius. But then, an interesting twist happens.
No, “Digger” isn’t a musical, but rather reveals that everything we’ve seen so far is a group of actors rehearsing an ambitious play about Digger called “Fossil Fools.” We’re witnessing the tech rehearsal hours before the show is set to debut in front of an audience, and Cruise drops his broad southern accent, revealing himself as Curtis Markson, the star of the show who has difficulty finding the satirical rhythm. It’s an engagingly meta turn, and shows much more of Cruise’s psyche than audiences might expect. During a teflon press tour hyping “Digger,” journalists weren’t able to conjure anything personal or interesting from him.
But during a scene where Cruise argues with “Fossil Fools” director Hannah (Sophie Wilde) about satire versus real-world events, the artifice of Cruise’s fat suit and cowboy boots melts away, and the fire in his eyes that made iconic performances in films like “Magnolia” and “Eyes Wide Shut” blaze returns in flashes. It also helps to contextualize Iñárritu’s vision of satire itself. Some reviews of “Digger” have knocked the very idea of satirical films in 2026.
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