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If I'm being totally honest here, Digging for Fire came completely out of left field for me. What was supposed to be just a filler to kill time between the bland Z for Zachariah and the epic 80's-gasm of Turbo Kid ended up taking me completely by surprise. This clever mix of Woody Allen and Force Majeure turned out to be an incredible human dramedy that examines two very different stories, and yet one doesn't manage to direct the attention from the other. Both stories flow in their own way, and seem to coincide perfectly with each other. The abundance of comedy, mixed with just the right amount of heartfelt drama, makes it a near perfect blend.
The mystery of the bone and gun presented in Digging for Fire doesn't delve into who did it, but rather what was it. Tim (Jake Johnson) becomes overcome with a nagging obsession over what he found buried in this backyard, much to his wife Lee's (Rosemarie DeWitt) dismay. She becomes so frazzled with his eccentric obsessions that she takes a brief hiatus with their son and retires to her parents' home. This is where the film breaks into its two separate stories. Divorce is frequently the topic of conversation with Lee and her mother, and we are left to wonder what will become of their marriage. Meanwhile, Tim has a never-ending flow of uninvited guests appearing in their rented home for an unplanned party. The night becomes increasingly wild for Tim, and his friends show no sign of wanting to depart from the premises. They actually manage to start helping Tim with his macabre quest to solve this mystery, and Tim starts to look at his own personal relationships a little closer.
Digging for Fire never bores, and rarely drags along, considering the hilariously jovial nature of a lot of the dialogue. Most of the film focuses on Tim's impromptu party, and the repercussions and results therein. Lee meets a few new faces, and slowly delves into the consideration of divorce even more, although we aren't really given any indication of a truly fractured marriage outside of a brief scuffle in the beginning about tax filing. There must be something deeper within Lee's apparently kleptomaniac nature that isn't fully explained in the film, but in the end, I don't care. It's a fun, genuine dramedy that doesn't intend to bore its audience with overly inflated expositions, and it succeeds in that respect. It's a funny film that had me chuckling at some of the more insane moments with Tim, and had me entranced with its humanly dramatic story with Lee. I've no doubt that this will turn out to be a terribly underrated film, or at the very least, underseen. It's a potentially fantastic dramedy that succeeds and charms on every front.