Hey Digger, you've got your film badge

I went to see Digger at the cinema the other evening. It’s a strange film, especially in the sense of how you can’t really write anything about the movie without ruining it for anyone who wants to see it, which then cuts off any possibility of writing anything that encourages anyone to go and see it.

I saw yesterday that Marina Hyde and Richard Osman has gleefully written the thing off as the biggest flop in cinematic history – and if you do something like that, may as well go big – but I suspect it’ll probably be a slow burn word of mouth type thing that lots more people will end up watching.

There’s a difficulty though in something that satirises the state of the world, because no one who needs to see it will actually go to watch it. And it’s not entertaining enough to enjoy in its own right in the same way that an adult can watch a Pixar film and get whole different layer of enjoyment out of it that goes over kids’ heads completely.

Tom Cruise’s character has a lengthy 30-minute (it feels like it) peroration in the middle of the film that has you checking your watch because you’re thinking ‘Ha ha, but obviously this is aimed at everyone except me’.

But it’s certainly not a bad film – I’m sure it will garner some sort of cult status over the coming years and find a home on some streaming platform or other. There’s a tough line to tread though, between the sort of artful filmmaking that lets the viewer get lost in whatever is happening and the sort of arty nonsense that likes to show all of its working on screen. I’m still not sure which side of that Digger falls into.