'Digger' Borrows Dr. Strangelove's Doomsday Machinery and Skips the Slyness
Variety's reviewer opens with a verdict that doubles as a punchline: Digger isn't funny. What it is, in the review's account, is nervy, in-your-face, audacious, adventurous and "bizarro" in a free-swinging, out-of-the-box way. It feels like a comedy, the reviewer says, because it's fueled by the relentless overacting of a bad Coen brothers movie.
The comparison that does the real work is to Dr. Strangelove. Digger borrows that film's doomsday architecture and leaves out the slyness, the review argues, replacing it with a lavish, in-your-face spectacle of browbeating.
Which leaves an odd artifact: something shaped exactly like a comedy in every respect except the laughs, and apparently betting that volume can stand in for wit. That bet is the whole argument.
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"Isn't funny" sitting next to "nervy" and "adventurous" isn't a dismissal — it's a description of a provocation that fails on one axis and lands on others. The review can't quite settle, and that's the interesting part.
The Strangelove comparison does settle something. Borrowing the doomsday frame while dropping the slyness isn't a mixed review — it names a mode, browbeating substituted for wit.