Palm Springs

I'm always a little wary when I see a movie (or TV show) say that they're doing the whole Groundhogs Day time loop story. I'm not opposed to it, I've said it before and I'll say it again, Groundhogs Day doesn't have a patent on that kind of story and we continue to see it done well, but I need something new to be brought to the table. Although I do have to give props to the person who thought releasing this in the middle of a pandemic and a lot of people are self confining themselves to home and starting to feel like their lives are groundhogs days, well done.

Palm Springs follows the story Nyles and Sarah (played by Andy Sandberg and Cristin Milioti). Sarah is the maid of honor at her sisters wedding in Palm Beach and Nyles is the boyfriend of one of the bridesmaids. The two meet and hit it off pretty well. However things go awry when a mysterious man attacks Nyles and Sarah follows Nyles into a mysterious cave.

In Groundhogs Day, Edge of Tomorrow, and Russian Doll fashion, Sarah is sent to the start of that day and only her and Nyles are cognizant of the fact that they're in one of those "time loop situations you may have heard about". It does not matter what they do, how many times they die, every time the two of them fall asleep, they wake up the same morning on November 8th the morning of Sarah's sister's wedding.

So like I said, I'm not opposed to the time loop situation story being reused, but I want to see something new. For example, Edge of Tomorrow made the loop the result of an alien tactic in the middle of a science fiction futuristic war. Russian Doll took the premise into TV form and put an emphasis on death. Palm Springs is probably the closest to Groundhogs Day in premise but there are a few differences that make it stand apart.

It takes a little bit from Russian Doll by having two people in the loop instead of just one, but the difference is that one has been doing the loop for far longer than the other one. At the start of the movie, Nyles has been in the loop so long that he can't remember what he did for a job prior to going into the loop. He's gone through all the phases of the time loop situation where he's no longer trying to get out of it and has just accepted his fate.

Sarah instead is at the beginning of her journey. The movie even winks at the premise of Groundhogs Day by going straight to the point of the story where the characters try to do good deeds to get out of the loop and it falls back into their face. So the meat of the movie is actually at the point where Sarah sort of accepts where she's at at the two just kind of hang out. Which sounds boring but it does feed into the fact that this is much more of a romantic comedy than a comedy.

And this works because Cristin Milioti and Andy Sandberg play off one another pretty well. Some of the most fun was when these two are just having fun and getting to know one another really well.

There's also a really fun element of the character of Roy that is introduced early on.

JK Simmons plays Roy, another guy at the wedding who Nyles brings into the time loop after a night of partying and is an example of someone else at a different stage of that time loop personal journey, but instead periodically comes to Palm Spring to let out anger at the guy who put him in a time loop for the rest of his life.

He's not as involved in the story as I wish he was, but he does play an important part in giving the film a sort of realistic edge. There's a point where Nyles says the pain is real and while they always wake up being a bad person in a time loop still would have an effect on someone and it's something they have to carry with them. 

For as much as this movie is a comedy, and I found myself laughing a lot, it does find itself getting very serious at times and it took me off guard. 

The movie seems like it's pretty low budget and it relies a lot on the acting of Milioti and Sandberg.

Which again, I don't have a huge problem with, they're good actors and they work well together. But when you have a premise that starts off really silly, two actors that I've seen mostly in comedies doing some relatively serious acting, it definitely threw me off.

The movie's third act is good... ish. The second act is mainly them goofing off and having a good time together whereas the third act kind of devolves into stereotypical rom com formula. It's by no means bad, but there were a few conventions and characters hurdles that seemed a little just a little too conventional for a story that starts off no where near conventional.

If you have Hulu, it's definitely one to check out because its probably one of the better original movies I've seen in a little bit. Movies being released directly to streaming services is probably going to be a trend we're going to see more of with the pandemic still making theatrical releases less common and I imagine we'll start to see the quality start to improve. For this part, Palm Springs is a good movie that clips along, clocking at about 90 minutes. If a movie can be concise like this one can, I'm all for it.

But those are my thoughts on Palm Springs. What did you think? What has been your favorite original film thrown on a streaming service as of late? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

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