Repeatedly wonderful (Groundhog Day (DVD))

Member Name: Rumblefish

Product:	Groundhog Day (DVD)
Date:	17/08/01 (142 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sharp, funny, emotive, with a great lead performance

Disadvantages: Other performances only adequate

The standard of film comedy to emerge from Hollywood in recent years has been largely poor, but long after all the dull-witted gross-out movies and dreary extended sitcom episodes have been forgotten, at least one film comedy from the last decade will still be treasured and acclaimed as a classic. That film is GROUNDHOG DAY.

What is remarkable about GROUNDHOG DAY is not that it is very funny (though it most assuredly is), it is that the film is also intelligent, profound, original, moving, and imbued with almost overwhelming hope and humanity. I can bring few films to mind of the countless number I’ve watched in my life that truly inspire me the way this one does.

The premise for GROUNDHOG DAY is either ingenious, preposterous, or a little of both. Supremely cynical and self-centred Pittsburgh television weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) travels to the nearby town of Punxsutawnney, with his new producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott), for the town’s annual February 2nd ‘Groundhog Day’ festival. In this peculiar ceremony Punxsutawney’s resident groundhog (or “rat” as Phil terms it) predicts if there will be an early spring, depending on whether or not he can see a shadow. Phil loathes the town, its people, and their customs, but is prevented from returning to Pittsburgh by a blizzard he failed to predict. The next morning he awakens to find that it is Groundhog Day…again. As it is the next day. And the next. For Phil is stuck in some kind of time warp, and though people around him are unaware that February 2nd is repeating itself, for Phil tomorrow never comes, and he must live the same day over and over and over again…

It may sound rather like an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (indeed if it were not a comedy you might expect Rod Serling to appear, saying something like “Consider, if you will, the peculiar plight of Mr Phil Connors…”), an
d in fact the film’s central idea owes much to an Oscar-nominated 1990 sci-fi short called 12.01 PM. In 12.01 PM the Earth becomes stuck in a ‘time bounce’ and a man finds himself living the same hour over and over again. But whereas 12.01 PM had a strictly scientific premise (and an horrific resolution – death providing no escape, the man is doomed to relive the same hour for eternity), GROUNDHOG DAY never really offers an explanation for Phil’s unusual predicament. If there is a force behind it all, the suggestion is that it is a divine one.

For GROUNDHOG DAY is a story of redemption. It is a salutary tale of how a man finds true happiness by changing from a bad person to a good one. However odd the film’s central conceit, it is merely the vehicle for a very simple message. In essence it is a cinematic fable – a film with a moral. But what makes GROUNDHOG DAY so compelling is the manner in which it gets across its moral, filtering Phil’s adventure through humour, romance, and melodrama.

When he first gets used to his predicament, Phil uses it to his inevitable advantage. He seduces women, steals money, eats like a pig – always safe in the knowledge that there will be no consequences the next day, and in fact can do the same again. Then he becomes bored and disillusioned, and seeks to end the cycle by killing the groundhog, and even himself. All the while he is falling deeper and deeper in love with Rita, who knows him today only as the cynical egotist she knew the day before. However hard Phil tries to impress Rita, he is back to square one when the day ends. Phil’s quest becomes to create “the perfect day”, by the end of which he hopes that a consummation of his love for Rita will somehow free him from Groundhog Day.

There are inevitably many comic possibilities in a plot such as this, and each is fully exploited. Every morning at 6 am Phil’s radio alarm swit
ches on to the strains of Sonny & Cher’s ‘I Got You Babe’, and yet however many times Phil bashes it, crushes it, or slams it on the floor, it is in perfect condition to do the same when 6 am comes around again. Since everyone else’s behaviour is identical from one Groundhog Day to the next, Phil is also confronted with identical irritants, such as Ned Ryerson, the former schoolmate who tries to sell him insurance every morning. Phil’s attempts to seduce Rita are also, at least initially, hilarious, as however much he tries to utilize his foreknowledge to his advantage, every day seems to end with her slapping him on the cheek.

Yet at times the film’s tone is serious and even poignant. As Phil learns to use his situation to help others rather than himself, he attempts to save the life of an elderly vagrant. Discovering that there are some destinies that can never be changed, Phil looks to the heavens in despair. Phil’s imprisonment is also a subtle metaphor for the predictability of everyday life that traps many people. “What would you do,” he asks, “if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” The film even finds room for some religious philosophy, as Phil at one point postulates that his immunity to time and death makes him a deity (“I’m a god. I’m not THE God…I don’t think…”), before pointing out that maybe the real God is not omnipotent, but knows everything simply because “He’s been around so long”.

Director Harold Ramis (who has a small cameo as a doctor) helms proceedings with commendable sensitivity, and recreates snowy Punxsutawney with genuine warmth. Danny Rubin’s clever, perfectly paced screenplay is also littered with some memorably silly gags, such as Phil driving along the railroad tracks towards an oncoming train and “betting he’ll s
werve first”, or Phil’s dim guesthouse landlady offering to “check with the kitchen” when asked if she ever has deja vu.

Bill Murray is ideally cast in the role of Phil Connors, utilizing his comic timing to make the most out of the crackling script. Perhaps surprisingly, Murray is at least as effective in conveying Phil’s growing humanitarianism than in conveying his initial misanthropy, and it is a performance of no little depth. Andie MacDowell is slightly less convincing as Rita, although her character is given little room to develop – inevitably given the plot.

If at times GROUNDHOG DAY seems a rather old-fashioned film, that is because its cinematic roots lie in the work of Frank Capra and Michael Powell, and in many fantasy-comedies of the Forties, such as HERE COMES MR JORDAN (later remade as HEAVEN CAN WAIT), A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, and particularly IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. It shares with the latter an innate faith in the goodness of mankind, and a real belief that altruism and humility do not go without reward. In IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, James Stewart as the kind-hearted George Bailey discovers that the world would be a considerably unhappier place without him. In GROUNDHOG DAY, selfish Phil Connors comes to realise that happiness comes not from thinking always of oneself but from thinking always of others. Unusually for Hollywood the sentiment is not expressed with layer upon layer of sugary, overblown indulgence, but with warmth and charm and disarming humour.

There really is a Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and they really do have a February 2nd celebration called ‘Groundhog Day’ in which a groundhog predicts the weather. However since the release of this film, the term ‘Groundhog Day’ has entered popular Western phraseology to the extent that I’ve seen it written in political columns and heard it spoken in radio sports reports. Many of us have had ou
r own Groundhog Day and found ourselves stuck in a cycle of mundane repetition from which there is seemingly no escape. GROUNDHOG DAY the film suggests the way to break such a cycle lies in our hearts.

It also asks a very thought-provoking and very cosmic question, put succinctly by Phil Connors early in the film: “What if there is no tomorrow?”

Summary: