Living Life on Repeat

Hard to deny, 1993 was a good year for comedy, if for no other reason that we got Groundhog Day. The film quickly became a hit, going on to garner $105 Mil against a budget as low as $14.6 Mil, but that only counts the theatrical run. Including home video rentals, sales, and broadcast licensing, the film became a juggernaut. And considering it basically had the lock on, “things two watch on February 2nd,” it also had a built-in, repeat watching audience that came along for the ride. All of that, plus a solid performance from Bill Murray, making this one of his better loved films, and you have a film that has basically cemented itself for audiences.

But does the film actually still hold up? We all (if we were alive back then, or have seen it in the years since) have watched Groundhog Day at least once. It’s a seminal comedic work, but also one of the best versions of the time loop story. It has since gone on to define the genre, effectively redefining the time loop trope as “doing a Groundhog Day”, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the film is still just as good now as it was back when it was released. For that we have to go to the source and watch the film again after all these years away, to see if the film we remember does actually hold up.

The good news is that it does, although with some caveats. As far as exploring its time loop story, taking a character from one end of the loop to the other and seeing how the journey changes them, the film is great. We have a shitty person who gets caught in a loop, and then because of it they become better, turning into a fully realized human being by the end of it (although it’s debatable whether they’re going to have a serious mental breakdown once the loop lets go of them). cIt’sa great journey for the character, leading to a satisfying conclusion for their story.

At the same time, though, the film around our main character has started to feel a little staged, a little less real, and a little older all things considered. This was a film made in 1993 and many parts of the world now feel pretty out of date. Cameras have changed, as have TVs, and you won’t find a cell phone just about anywhere in this version of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Characters talk and act in ways that feel almost quaint now, over thirty years later. It’s a sweet and kind small town that feels like it was lifted from a Hollywood production and not one that’s real by any stretch, and that lends the film a bit of artifice on top of the loop, making its construction feel less real and less grounded than it could have otherwise.

Really, it’s how much you can invest in the journey of Murray’s Phil Connors. He drives the show and the whole of Groundhog Day hinges on him. The movie lives or dies on Bill Murray, so it’s good that he’s in practically every scene of the film. If he wasn’t, if the film cut away for longer than a few seconds, you feel like it would all fall apart under inspection. The world is only real so long as Phil Connors is viewing it, and it’s only worth watching because Phil is in it. I guess, in a way, that does make him like a god (like he says in the film) because the whole show is about him.

As we all know, Phil is a jerk when we first see him. He’s the weatherman for a Pittsburgh TV station, and, as his coworkers know, he’s a bit of a prima donna. He doesn’t want to go to Punxsutawney, PA, to cover the annual showing of the groundhog, thinking the whole thing is pretty stupid. His new producer, Rita Hanson (Andie MacDowell), thinks it’s great, though, and Phil quickly realizes that while the whole jaunt out to Punxsutawney is awful, Rita is pretty okay. He does want to get to know her even if he’s stuck in a town he hates.

Good thing he has something to look forward to since, after spending February 2nd in Punxsutawney, he wakes up to find out that it’s February 2nd in Punxsutawney all over again. And then again. And again. Phil gets stuck in a time loop and, after going a little bit crazy because of it, starts trying to figure out if he can escape, then tries to die, and then finally accepts his new reality in this world. And as he does so he ends up making himself into a man that Rita might actually fall in love with. He goes from asshole to loveable in the span of (for her) a single day, and then he comes out of the loop a new man, ready for the world ahead.

We can argue over whether Phil would actually be okay after spending months (years? Tens of thousands of years?) in a time loop. That’s not really the focus of the story. What happens to Phil is beyond what Groundhog Day cares about (although for the film to have a happy ending, Phil does need to be fine in the end). No, it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters. Phil has to take his quest, has to figure out that he needs to be a better person, for the film to work. That’s what gets us invested in his story and keeps us coming back for more.

That is where Bill Murray comes in. He plays Phil so well, from the start where he’s a curmudgeony asshole to the end where, well, he’s a curmudgeonly guy with a heart-of-gold. Murray’s acerbic, goofy demeanor works well for all facets of Phil’s personality, and Murray is able to let the character shine even when he’s riding at his worst moments. It’s a pretty great performance considering Phil is someone that, in any other film, you’d absolutely hate. You’d want him to get bumped off in act two so that the rest of the characters could go on to have good, happy lives.

But then that’s the trick of the film: it wants you to love and hate Phil. You want to see him as a jerk, even while laughing with him, and then when he finds a way to turn himself around, you appreciate how much he’s grown and changed. Murray is able to infuse that part of Phil with the right level of charm and wit, just as much as he’s able to make the asshole version work as well. Although, really, deep down you know he’s mostly just playing Bill Murray. It’s the character he’s played, in so many other films, just refined into someone going through something of a hero’s journey.

That’s why it’s easy to ignore the artifice around him, especially now that the film is over thirty years old. Rita isn’t much of a character on her own, we just like her because of how Phil sees her. The townsfolk are all tropes and stereotypes, but we enjoy them because, over time, Phil learns to love them. We view everything from Phil’s perspective, and it helps to color and flesh out the world. What Phil cares about, we care about. He, the god of his little time loop, makes us appreciate his world so much more.

Groundhog Day is Phil’s movie, through and through. It lives or dies on Phil, so it’s a good thing Murray turns in one of his best performances ever. It has all the charm of his previous goofball roles packed into a human that actually learns how to grow and change. The character wouldn’t really work if it was played by anyone else, with them at the center of it all, playing god of their little world. Murray knocks this one out of the park, and that’s what makes it a movie you want to go back to again and again. And again.