Groundhog Day (1993)
Rated PG for some thematic elements
Score: 4 out of 5
What is there to say about Groundhog Day? It's a funny movie, but it's not the kind of comedy that's designed to make you bust your gut laughing. Rather, beneath its jokes, it's a pretty dark story about what it feels like to be caught in a rut in one's life accomplishing nothing, one that co-writer Danny Rubin said was inspired by Anne Rice's gothic horror novel The Vampire Lestat (albeit, obviously, without the vampires and the killing... mostly). It's a character study about a man whose experience in the kind of time loop that's since been imitated countless times leads him to a place of insanity and despair until he can finally pull his life together and grow as a human being, the kind of role that honestly felt made for Bill Murray, taking his "wiseass douchebag" comedy persona and exploiting it in a manner not unlike Scrooged, though I'd easily argue that this film does it a lot better. It's not a movie that 100% clicked with me like it has for so many others; I think the generally lighthearted, family-friendly tone and PG rating held it back from some of the dark places that its story leaned in. Even so, however, I found it to be a highly enjoyable film that I imagine will hold up remarkably well upon a rewatch, a showcase of Murray at his best that's anchored by his compelling protagonist, a story that I think we can all relate to now more than ever, and a unique pacing that captures the mood of its story astonishingly well.
We start the film with Phil Connors, a meteorologist for a Pittsburgh TV station and all-around total asshole. At the station, he treats his co-workers like dirt and sees the place as little more than a stepping stone to a higher-paying, more prestigious job in a larger media market. He hates having to cover the annual Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and makes no secret of it to his producer Rita or his cameraman Larry. His first dose of karma comes when his weather report that morning turns out to have been disastrously off as the blizzard that he predicted would miss the area instead hits with full force, leaving him snowed in and forced to spend the night in the town. The second dose comes the next morning... or rather, the morning of February 2 once again, as he finds himself living the same day again... and again... and again, with no end in sight.
This is a movie that stings the hardest if you've ever felt yourself to be stuck in a rut in life, spinning your wheels as it feels like nothing you ever do can really get you moving forward. We've all been there, seeking out better jobs than the ones we're working, finding ourselves tied down in places we hate with people we've grown to despise, and of course, the last two years of our lives that we've had to put on hold on account of a plague. That is exactly the predicament that Phil finds himself in, a fantastical version of COVID lockdown that has seemingly made it impossible for him to do anything with his life. During this time, some of us learned new skills, others let our freak flags fly as we found ourselves unbound by the rules of polite society, others took stock of our lives and decided to fix ourselves up, still others sat back and indulged in everything that we'd been told we couldn't, and a few of us fell into despair at the growing aimlessness in our lives and how the passage of time no longer seemed to matter.
Over the course of the film, Phil does all of these things and more, at first exploiting the lack of consequences for his actions by having one-night stands across town and robbing armored cars, before the realization of what an eternity of living the same day over and over again actually entails causes him to slowly fall apart, seeking a way to beat the time loop and figure out how he got trapped in it in the first place. In the original script, he was cursed by a jilted former lover who turned to witchcraft to punish him, an acceptable explanation but one that I'm not surprised was cut from the film, as the exact mechanisms of the time loop aren't really relevant to the plot compared to how they impact Phil as a person. Murray shines in this role, in no small part because of how well it takes on and explores his great stock character, the snarky jerk who you'd like to see get knocked down a peg but who manages to avoid becoming just a pure bastard thanks to Murray's force of charisma. Over the course of the film, his attempts to change his ways constantly fall flat, and for reasons you might not expect until you watch them happen; for instance, taking the time to learn about a woman you're interested in may backfire and get you a slap in the face if the woman starts to suspect that you're stalking her (which Phil kind of is). One of my favorite scenes is one where Phil meets a pair of burnouts who emblemize a non-supernatural version of the situation he now finds himself in, two guys who do nothing but drink and bowl and represent the worst nightmare of an ambitious man like Phil. A lot of the subtext of this film, and the source of much of its humor, is Phil refusing to learn the unstated but increasingly obvious karmic lesson that his situation is trying to teach him, coming up with various schemes to find a way to break the time loop when the entire point is that he ought to take things slower instead because his ambition and ego are big parts of why he's such an awful person.
There are moments when this movie can drag, as Phil's refusal to learn his lesson is hammered in over and over again. At 104 minutes, I'd say that this is a movie that could've stood to be about five to ten minutes shorter, as at times it starts to feel like I'm in the same boat Phil's in, going through the motions over and over again. There were some great scenes here that show how such editing could've been to the film's benefit, like when we see Phil waltz through an armored car robbery having clearly practiced countless times before, or tell Rita all the things he's learned about the various people around them in the diner. We don't need to see how he learned these things, just the basic grasp that we and Phil have gained of how the time loop functions was enough explanation. There were a bunch of scenes of Phil repeating himself that could've been trimmed down in a similar manner, just showing us him doing something once rather than twice or three times. The romantic storyline between Phil and Rita also felt pretty schmaltzy, especially after the more cynical direction it takes earlier where Rita repeatedly rejects Phil no matter what he does to try and win her over (efforts that, as noted, are presented to us as pretty sleazy in a manner that makes her reaction feel justified). It's through no fault of Andie MacDowell, who gave a fine performance in the part, it's just that the romance between her and Murray felt forced, like it wanted Phil to get the girl even after suggesting otherwise.
The Bottom Line
Groundhog Day is a very fun and sweet little comedy that still holds up years later even after being copied so many times, a more family-friendly showcase of Bill Murray's talents with a nice message about not letting ambition consume you, even if it's kinda flabby in places and doesn't really sting as hard as it could. It deserves its reputation as a comedy classic.
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Groundhog Day (1993)
Rated PG for some thematic elements
Score: 4 out of 5
What is there to say about Groundhog Day? It's a funny movie, but it's not the kind of comedy that's designed to make you bust your gut laughing. Rather, beneath its jokes, it's a pretty dark story about what it feels like to be caught in a rut in one's life accomplishing nothing, one that co-writer Danny Rubin said was inspired by Anne Rice's gothic horror novel The Vampire Lestat (albeit, obviously, without the vampires and the killing... mostly). It's a character study about a man whose experience in the kind of time loop that's since been imitated countless times leads him to a place of insanity and despair until he can finally pull his life together and grow as a human being, the kind of role that honestly felt made for Bill Murray, taking his "wiseass douchebag" comedy persona and exploiting it in a manner not unlike...
...wait, wait, wait, haven't I already written this before?
No... no... oh, son of a b-
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