Diggers

"Diggers" plays like the bad parts in a full season of a one-hour television drama series all mashed together than a well-edited, gripping feature. Sadly, the only digging going on here is literally for clams, and coins. The score (original music by David Mansfield) also screams "This guy is our friend, so we didn't have to pay for the rights. He's an insurance adjuster now."

The strong point of "Diggers" would be the honesty of the characters; aimless working class Long Islanders who live for sex, drugs and clams(?). But they are almost too human; thus, not always terribly interesting. Many of the scenes fall flat in this film, and leave one wondering why they weren't edited out, or better yet, why they were ever filmed to begin with.

The writer (Ken Marino), and director (Katherine Dieckmann) don't seem to be interested in maintaining any sort of theme, or thread to the story. Vaguely, it all revolves around the death of Hunt's (Paul Rudd), and Gina's (Maura Tierney) father; a clammer who made a decent living before the "South Shell" dynasty came into town. His death (hardly) functions as a catalyst for Hunt's friends, who are also a younger generation of clammers. Hunt's father symbolizes the death of the full-time, breadwinning clammer, and this is supposed to evoke an onslaught of adjustments.

The problem with all this supposed "change" is nobody seems to have any difficult decisions to make. Should we sit around, whine about the new corporation in town, and do drugs all day; or try to do something functional with our lives? Gee, I'm not sure; let's pop some pills, and think about this.

Also, if a writer or director chooses to make a character-driven film shouldn't the characterss be involved in complicated, and mysterious relationships? Sixteen year olds have friendships of this magnitude, but you'd think thirty-six year olds would have evolved into something deeper, perhaps something capable of evoking discomfort, or at least bigger change. But not these guys, not much has changed for them since high school, and so the decisions they're faced with are as complicated as that of a recent college graduate who functions at the pace of a sedated turtle. The tagline is "No one can drift forever," but you can't help but wonder if they're sure about this.