Satire is a difficult balancing act.

It can exaggerate. It can provoke. It can make audiences uncomfortable. But if it wants to say something meaningful about politics, culture, religion, corporate power, or social division, it still has to understand the people and ideas it is satirizing.

That is where Digger lost me.

The film takes aim at corporate greed, willful ignorance, religion, and the politics surrounding energy production. Those are all worthy subjects for serious—and even outrageous—dramatic treatment. But rather than opening the door to constructive conversation, the screenplay too often reduces those ideas into caricature.

What could have been a bonkers, daring, wildly entertaining movie instead becomes clunky, lumbering, and relentlessly heavy-handed.

And yet, there are things here worth discussing. The cast is strong. The production design is often mesmerizing. There are worthwhile ideas buried beneath all the noise.

Digger contains the ingredients of a fascinating movie.

There is a striking visual world, a committed cast, and a group of subjects worth exploring—corporate power, energy, belief, ignorance, and the difficulty of living together when everyone thinks the other side has lost its mind.

But satire needs more than targets. It needs dramatic precision, characters rather than positions, and enough space for audiences to think rather than simply be shouted at.

There is a wild, funny, provocative movie buried somewhere inside Digger.

Unfortunately, the screenplay never quite digs it out.

Joining me once again is friend of the show Sean Boelman, film critic at FandomWire and member of the Critics Choice Association.