If Max is Tim's crush for the night then Ben (Orlando Bloom), a motorcycle-driving restaurant manager, is Lee's. The film cuts back and forth from Tim's night to Lee's night, the action swift and funny but with plenty of time for poignancy and conversation, as well as the random magic events (like looking at Saturn through a telescope) that help make life worth living. The script uses the familiar devices of "dude-bros on the prowl" and "nagging unhappy wives" and twists them inside out, intertwining them, reveling in the ridiculous nature of the roles assigned to us. If one thinks that "Digging for Fire" is going to turn into "Hangover IV", Swanberg and Johnson have other things in mind. 

Swanberg's films sometimes have a tendency to just sit there, the frame static, the action stalled. 2013's "All the Light in the Sky" had beautiful performances and an interesting set-up, but the execution felt muted and fuzzy. "Digging for Fire" sparks with life in comparison, moving from humor to loneliness to screwball to those piercing moments when human beings, against the odds, are able to connect, to those seemingly tiny moments of revelation when a truth is revealed.

"Obvious" shouldn't be a dirty word for writers or film-makers. A lot of scripts could use more "obvious." Not simplistic or reliance on cliches, but an open statement of purpose, a clarity of theme. Tennessee Williams was not afraid of being obvious: he put his themes right out there in his titles and had no fear in stating said themes as strongly as possible in the script. "Digging for Fire" wants to talk about serious topics and it wants to do so in a humorous light-hearted way. It succeeds.

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