{"id":914432,"date":"2026-09-29T19:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T19:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/914432\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T19:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T19:34:13","slug":"digger-is-the-worst-movie-of-tom-cruises-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/914432\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Digger\u2019 is the worst movie of Tom Cruise\u2019s career"},"content":{"rendered":"

My weary cynicism blinded me to the parallel the \u201cDigger\u201d trailer had to Robin Williams\u2019s 1992 disaster, \u201cToys.\u201d That Barry Levinson film may have the funniest teaser trailer ever cut \u2014 and you don\u2019t see a single frame from the movie. It was just Williams riffing. If you\u2019ve seen \u201cToys,\u201d you know why Fox didn\u2019t want to show you any clips from the movie, opting instead to sucker you in with Williams\u2019s penchant for hilarious improvisation.<\/p>\n

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When Warner Bros. offered up a second trailer for \u201cDigger,\u201d it was full of clips. Trailers are marketing devices, which is why I dislike them. So it\u2019s only natural that the studio would want to entice you with a funny joke, a salacious bit of innuendo, or the dangled carrot of \u201cwhat happens next?\u201d The \u201cDigger\u201d trailer made me ask, \u201cIs this the best two-and-a-half minutes they could carve out of this movie?\u201d <\/p>\n

The answer is yes, because there aren\u2019t two-and-a-half minutes of a good movie in this turgid, unfunny, and borderline unwatchable 128-minute mess. The mess isn\u2019t even hot here; it\u2019s as ice cold as the filmmakers think their satire is, and as devastatingly bad as the cataclysmic climate control crisis at the center of its plot. <\/p>\n

In fact, this movie is confused about what satire actually is. It can\u2019t tell the difference between the stage play, \u201cNoises Off,\u201d which is a farce, and \u201cDr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,\u201d which is the hilarious and timely satire \u201cDigger\u201d so desperately wants to be. <\/p>\n

If you doubt me, know that late in the film, Tom Cruise\u2019s character (who shall remain nameless at this point in my review) actually says, \u201cThis isn\u2019t satire, it\u2019s farce!\u201d He then asks, \u201cWhy is this funny?,\u201d which led me to write \u201cOK, I\u2019m being trolled\u201d in my notebook. You can find traces of Cruise\u2019s self-deprecating humor if you go back 30 years to \u201cJerry Maguire\u201d<\/a> or more recently, to 2008\u2019s \u201cTropic Thunder,\u201d where Cruise played a character like the one he plays here. But it\u2019s been in short supply since, and it\u2019s clear that director and co-writer Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu thinks he\u2019s bringing it back.<\/p>\n

The script feels as if there was no communication between I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and the four other credited writers. Even worse, their central conceit is stolen from Preston Sturges\u2019s wonderful 1941 satire, \u201cSullivan\u2019s Travels.\u201d The big difference is that the great Mr. Sturges had a sense of humor, while I\u00f1\u00e1rritu has always had absolutely none. His idea of big laughs is having John Goodman\u2019s president of the United States repeatedly scream out \u201cI\u2019ve got cancer in my a–hole!\u201d or reveling in the visual brutality of a raggedy, fake looking cat who is clearly in pain from old age and numerous illnesses, including cancer. Those cancer jokes must have slayed in the writers\u2019 room, folks.<\/p>\n

Of course, the poor cat dies. It was the only character worth a damn in this godawful misfire.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve given you enough time to exit this review. As critics, we\u2019re not supposed to reveal spoilery plot points. Mind you, the \u201ctwist\u201d in this movie occurs 20 minutes in and changes the entire structure of what happens over the next 108 minutes. Unlike my review for \u201cThe Drama,\u201d<\/a> I refuse to work around the twist here. You were warned.<\/p>\n

\"TomTom Cruise in “Digger.”Warner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n

Turns out \u201cDigger\u201d is the story of the onstage and backstage dramas of a play, one that depicts a real climate-based disaster caused by the world\u2019s most powerful man, Digger Rockwell. An actor in heavy makeup named Curtis (Cruise) plays Digger. I\u2019ve no idea how they expected this concept to work, as this play does not look as if it could possibly be presented on a stage. <\/p>\n

What is the point of presenting the movie this way? The backstage shenanigans have no dramatic heft, nor do they contribute anything of worth. A category 6 hurricane, a missing plane, and a lead actor battling the director (Sophie Wilde) are the major elements of the backstage drama, none of which are fleshed out enough for us to care. <\/p>\n

However, we do get scenes where people tell Curtis he\u2019s a great actor! The play concept also gives I\u00f1\u00e1rritu a chance to shoot scenes of audience members giving spirited standing ovations to his own movie\u2019s plot.<\/p>\n

The story you were sold in ads is a red herring to get you into the theater to hear endless commentary on climate change and how fossil fuel is ruining Earth and will kill us all if we don\u2019t act. Cruise delivered this important message far more effectively when he voiced Captain Planet on that animated series from the 1980s. <\/p>\n

I assumed that the play within \u201cDigger,\u201d called \u201cFossil Fools,\u201d was meant to be dreadful, but we\u2019re told it\u2019s run for 25 years and has been a huge hit. Meanwhile, on \u201cstage,\u201d everyone from Goodman to Riz Ahmed (as an actor playing an abused Indian scientist) screams incessantly and makes endless speeches. As the actor playing Digger\u2019s onstage sister, Sandra H\u00fcller is shockingly bad. Cruise gets to grandstand and overact in downright embarrassing ways, chewing the scenery with impunity. And there\u2019s a lot of scenery for him to chew: This film was shot in VistaVision.<\/p>\n

In addition to pointing out in dialogue every possible criticism one could have with the movie, \u201cDigger\u201d distrusts its audience so much that it literally stops for its actors to explain the movie\u2019s themes to you. One of these themes is that people suffering through a global crisis need something to take their minds off their troubles. That something, as Joel McCrea\u2019s character learned in \u201cSullivan\u2019s Travels,\u201d is a comedy. I bet I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and Cruise thought they were offering the same option with \u201cDigger.\u201d By comparison, doomscrolling about the world going to hell is a better use of your time than paying to see this movie. You\u2019ll laugh more, for starters.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: Odie has written only nine zero star reviews in his 20 years as a critic. At the Globe, this marks his fourth.<\/p>\n

ZERO stars<\/p>\n

DIGGER<\/p>\n

Directed by Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu. Written by I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Sabina Berman, Jez Butterworth, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicol\u00e1s Giacobone. Starring Tom Cruise, John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Sandra H\u00fcller, Sophie Wilde. At Coolidge Corner, AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, AMC Causeway, suburbs. 129 min. R (the characters swear as much as I did watching them)<\/p>\n

Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe’s film critic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My weary cynicism blinded me to the parallel the \u201cDigger\u201d trailer had to Robin Williams\u2019s 1992 disaster, \u201cToys.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-914432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}