Groundhogs Day

I saw Groundhogs Day when I was pretty young. The main parts that I remember from that movie are the parts where Bill Murray kills himself and thought that this movie was a very sad movie if a guy tries to kill himself and he just keeps on waking up on the same day. I realize that those scenes were supposed to be more funny than I remember, but even watching it now, I kind of saw it as still kind of depressing.

Before I get into the full review, I should mention one part that is pretty crucial to the lens I watched the movie in. I don’t think it was intentional, but this is something that probably hurt my viewing process.

I’m not a fan of Bill Murray.

It’s not that I don’t like the guy, I think he’s a successful actor and he has to have a fan base out there. And I’m also not saying that I haven’t liked him in certain things. I liked his cameo in Zombieland and his small role in Grand Budapest Hotel. I also know that I haven’t seen him in everything. I really want to see Stripes. I also know that he has had a history doing movies with Wes Anderson, movies I’ve always been interesting in delving to.

However, a lot of the movies people think are Murray’s best performance, I just don’t really understand. Caddyshack is one. Ghostbusters I was underwhelmed with. Lost in Translation I was underwhelmed as well. And honestly Groundhogs Day is another one I just don’t understand the appeal for.

Groundhogs Day follows the story of Phil Connors (played by Murray), a weatherman with a local news station. Connors is overall, a mean guy. He’s sarcastic, he’s rude, and he doesn’t take his work seriously. All he wants to do is move up and he doesn’t care about those around. At the start of the movie, he and his crew, his producer Rita Hanson (played by Andie MacDowell) and his camera man (played by Chris Elliot), are sent to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the famous Groundhogs Day forecast.

Things are pretty straight forward throughout the day. He gives a less than mediocre report on the groundhog, and they try to go back to Pittsburgh but are snowed in. Phil goes to sleep but instead of waking up the next day, he wakes up at the beginning of Groundhogs day and thus is stuck in a time loop where he needs to repeat Groundhogs day over and over again.

The rest of the movie is him trying to find a way out of the loop and learning to be a better person, all while stuck in a small town with a number of funny folksy characters.

Now this will be the only time I make reference to this but this exact set up was used about 20 years later in 2014 with the movie Edge ofTomorrow… and it was done better.

Now these two movies could not be any more different. The only thing they have in common is the fact that they wake up on the same day over and over again. There are a couple of conventions that repeat, like the character stuck in the loop saying things that other people are going to say before they say it and being able to predict something is going to happen before it even happens. But apart from that, Edge of Tomorrow is a serious war action movie while Groundhogs day is a Bill Murray comedy.

But in my personal opinion, I think Edge of Tomorrow used the time loop better because it was explained and it was happening for a specific reason.

In Groundhogs Day, the time loop is never explained and there’s never a solidified reason on why it happened on this specific day and to Phil Connors.

Now I’m not saying the set up for Groundhogs Day is necessarily bad, and I will explain that a little bit more later in the review, but I’m gonna get it out of the way, now that I’ve seen both films, I’m gonna say that Edge of Tomorrow did a better job in a movie about a guy going through a time loop where he repeats the same day over and over again.

But what are the good things about Groundhogs Day. While I think Edge of Tomorrow did it better, you can’t forget that Groundhogs Day was the first to play around with this concept and its an incredibly creative idea. I also think that this concept needed to be a comedy concept before it was taken seriously because it is a very funny concept. It was even comical in Edge of Tomorrow.

Furthermore, it’s a movie that has a pretty straight forward moral. Just be a good person. We live in a world where we yearn for new and original ideas and ideas and morals need to be subtle. Groundhogs Day is an example of what movies used to be in that they needed to spell out the moral pretty clearly and the ending had to be wrapped up in a tight little bow. That’s what pretty much happens in Groundhogs Day. It’s a pretty self-contained story which is refreshing and good for the nostalgia in me.

But while the movie is pretty straight forward, it is also very vague, especially in the reasons Phil is caught in this loop. I mean its basically to teach him a lesson and make him become a better person, however, you never really know what is causing the time loop. And while I mentioned before this was something that Edge of Tomorrow did better at, I think it was a good choice for Groundhogs Day to not explain that phenomena and focus more on the story. These days everyone is doing world building and trying to build a franchise. If Groundhogs Day had created an explanation for why Phil was caught in this loop, it would have been more of a fantasy film more than a straight up comedy, which I think works better in the long run and focuses more on the moral of the film.

Now I will talk about the not so great things in this movie.

Part of the reason I’m not a huge fan of Bill Murray is that he’s supposedly revered as this comic genius, and yet I have a really hard time finding him funny. I have come to understand that Bill Murray’s type of comedy is very dry and ironic. He doesn’t rely on voices, or impressions, or really even jokes. His comedy more comes from how he responds to funny circumstances with a sarcastic tone and deadpan reactions. Which I think works sometimes, but when that’s his shtick all the time, I just can’t really say that I am a fan of Bill Murray. It’s the same reason I can’t say I’m a real fan of Melissa McCarthy because while I laughed at her shtick once in Bridesmaids, she keeps doing the same thing and its not as funny as it was the first time I saw it.

Furthermore, I’m not wild about any of the performances in this film. Andie MacDowell’s character is just down right annoying both in her dialogue and her delivery of it and the rest of the characters in the movie are such small parts that its not really worth mentioning.

This movie centers totally on Phil Connors and his Bill Murray reactions to the continuous loop he finds himself in. He out of the blue is interested in his producer, probably because he ran out of women to sleep with in Punxsutawney and he finally got around to her. But the movie makes it seem like he falls in love with her but at the same time they don’t really show the days he really gets to know her the way you would expect someone to if they said they were in love with them. I mean he’s got the time.

Maybe I’m thinking about this movie too critically when it should just be a straight forward comedy. But the reason I have a hard time just taking it as a straight forward comedy is because the movie doesn’t see itself that way. There are actually some kind of serious moments in the movie, like when he tries and saves the homeless guy on the street. That’s something that is pretty serious. And when a movie has those moments, its does set its own tone, especially if its supported by comedy that is not in your face joke oriented but instead very dry Bill Murray comedy.

On top of all of that, I have a hard time staying awake during this movie because it is so dry. You’re not going to get a lot of laugh out loud moments in this movie because of Murray’s humor, because of the weird tempo of comedic moments to serious moments. I’d like to say this movie is smarter than all of that, but it doesn’t market itself as that and its just too disjointed for me to really understand what they’re actually going for in this movie.

Groundhogs Day will give you chuckles. It will also give you a pretty creative concept for a comedy and it will give you a pretty straight forward moral driven comedy. However, it will also provide you with a very dry and a lot of questionable funny moments. You may love it if you are a fan of Bill Murray, but it might not be the laugh out loud rip roaring comedy you were maybe told it was.

I know a lot of people hold this movie in high regard and I am not saying you are wrong, its just not my cup of tea because I am not a fan of Bill Murray. I tried watching his Christmas Special and I gotta tell the truth, I got kind of bored of it.

But overall, those are my thoughts on Groundhogs Day. What do you think? Can someone explain the appeal of Bill Murray please? I feel like it’s something I’ve really missed out and need someone to explain to me. Maybe my thoughts will change. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me ideas for movies or TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can also get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I’ll leave you with this. While I'm not a fan of Bill Murray films, I do recognize that the guy seems like the kind of guy anybody would want to hang out with. He seems like a decent enough person and I understand why people just like him. Here's him talking on Jimmy Kimmel and I do have to say, I get it. Enjoy!