Depending on who you ask, critics like me are either totally irrelevant relics of the past like almanacs or sundials – Hollywood’s dream scenario – or snarling Godzillas who crush poor, innocent films to death with relish.
Well, it was clear what the reality was this past weekend.
After some scathing reviews, Tom Cruise’s “Digger” became the flop heard around the world. Tom tanked so hard that his wreck is on track to be one of the biggest flops in the world. all the time.
As much as I like to quote myself, my favorite line actually comes from my very reasonable friend David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter.
“You watch with excruciating weariness as he disappears on his own, then you realize with dismay that there is another heartbreaking hour left to endure,” wrote King Ghidorah, excuse me, David.
After the critical slump, domestic box office projections for “Digger” plunged off a cliff like Agent Ethan Hunt: $20 million (desperate to begin with) slipped to $15 million, eventually hitting $8 million. Even “Masters of the Universe” opened to $29 million.
Keep in mind that “Digger” — a message-rich meta-satire from the “Birdman” director about an oil tycoon facing environmental disaster — reportedly cost between $135 million and $180 million to make. It’s a huge budget for what it is. Less arthouse, more arthouse.
Despite this, there is a palpable sense that Hollywood is shocked that critics would do this to Tom Cruise, whom they tend to play nice with. They are even more amazed that our kvetching worked. Cruise should be critic-proof, they think. For them, in a just world, everything should be.
These days, herculean efforts are made to circumvent the honest opinions of professional appraisers.
The stars will film cute videos making pizzas for the New York Times.
They sit down to light-hearted podcasts like “Good Hang with Amy Poehler” and “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” and chat for an hour about their childhoods and first jobs.
Most nauseatingly, my Page Six Hollywood colleague Tatiana Siegel reported that “Digger” held a special trailer launch event to pander to influencers. Attendees were able to pose for a professional photo with Cruise. Naturally, these parasites all think “Digger” is better than “The Godfather.”
See? Tom and Co. went out of their way to disparage Manohla Dargis of the New York Times, Kyle Smith of the Wall Street Journal, Owen Gleiberman of Variety and David Erlich of IndieWire. And little old me, of course.
Oops. It didn’t work. These five very different critics all hated it.
Now Hollywood is scrambling to fix the disaster – much like Digger is doing! But it’s a mission: impossible.
Warner Bros. has released a desperate new clip drawing on the film’s divisions and imploring audiences to “decide for themselves.” The subtext was: “…since we couldn’t decide for you.”
And Anne Hathaway took to the movie site Letterboxd and submitted her very first review. Welcome to my lucrative field, Anne! Soon you too will be able to have a fourth floor walk-up with just one closet.
“I loved this brilliant film,” the movie star wrote. “It’s worth taking the time to see and decide for yourself what you think. For me? 10/10.”
See? There’s that condescending phrase again. The idea of critics influencing public opinion is absolutely repugnant to these people.
Could Hathaway’s passion come from the fact that she’ll star alongside Cruise next year in “Days of Thunder 2”? I wouldn’t dare suggest such a thing.
And strangely enough, Jane Fonda jumped into the fight. Anti-criticism activism, perhaps?
“The film allows us to witness another side of Tom Cruise’s courage,” Fonda wrote about him on Instagram as if he were Nelson Mandela. “It was a big and brave risk for him to take on this role and he was very good at it and very brave.”
Uh. Climbing the Burj Khalifa is courageous. Donning prosthetics and speaking with a hokey Texas accent in a film from the director of “The Revenant” is shameless Oscar chasing.
Cruise is just as transparent about his thirst for statuette (he never won an Oscar) as Timothée Chalamet was in “Marty Supreme,” except that people really liked that movie and it made money.
Maybe he’ll handle a pity nomination as a gesture against grumpy critics – the industry coming together to chastise the horrible monsters who spend years viewing, thinking about and analyzing all their work. But he won’t win.
We’re not all bad, you know.
As we did with “Marty” in 2025, critics have helped many films that were hardly safe this year: “The Invite,” “Coyote vs. Acme,” “Project Hail Mary,” and “Obsession,” among others.
But not Cruise’s broken down vehicle, which is definitely in trouble because of us. Don’t go digging the critics’ graves yet.
Gn entert
