Groundhog Day

This is one of my all-time favorite movies and has been for over thirty years. Besides being funny and a good love story and a story of personal transformation, I love any story where people loop through the same time period over and over—especially when they're able to prove it to others by predicting events. I also happen to be a big fan of Bill Murray.

Other stories involving such time loops that know of are...

• Run Lola Run
• Edge of Tomorrow (aka Live Die Repeat)
• Russian Doll
• Omni Loop

The chemistry between Bill Murray's character (Phil) and Andie MacDowell's character (Rita) is pretty good. They both played their parts very well, and Phil's intelligent self-loathing and cynicism complements Rita's easy-goingness, cheerfulness and personability. The film also set it up well where Phil first sees Rita and you can tell she made an impression on him, but it's subtle and he doesn't really reveal it until later in the film.

I especially liked Bill Murray's acting regarding Phil's bewilderment the first time his day repeated, his love affair with Rita, and his general malaise with his job and life—it was subtle but just barely perceptible before it was made obvious how much he actually hated everything. And I thought the actors in this movie in general were good at portraying everyday realistic people.

One particular touch I liked was when Rita said she felt déjà vu, like she'd experienced the same thing before, even though Phil was the one who was actually experiencing the time loop. This is a nice touch because it has subtle philosophical/metaphysical implications that aren't further explored or resolved in any pat way; it's left open-ended.

I also just realized a deep metaphor in the movie as I was writing this. Phil's name is the same name as that of the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, who predicts six more weeks of winter if he sees his own shadow when he's pulled out of a box. A couple of people even teased Phil about this in the movie. This is profound because the whole movie could be said to be about Phil going through the same bleak winter day until he works through and resolves his own "shadow self," to use a Jungian term.

I laughed out loud several times during this film, which is rare for me when watching a comedy. Most comedies aren't very funny to me; even my three favorite adult sitcom cartoons I rarely laugh at. 

I also related to Phil's womanizing tendencies (my only fictional hero is Don Giovanni) and liked how he was so successful with women as well as being extremely self-promoting in that respect. Phil was reminiscent of Bill Murray's character in Ghostbusters (another one of my all-time favorite movies) in that sense.

One minor oversight maybe worth mentioning is that Phil never bothered to see what would happen if he stayed up all night until 6:00 AM (the time when he'd wake up and start the same day over again) instead of going to sleep. Of course anybody in his position would do that!

So, overall, this is a great movie. The only caveat is that it's a bit dated and some people may not like old movies. I don't usually, but this movie doesn't seem to suffer from the cheesiness or overall crappiness that most old movies do.