Groundhog Day: A Brilliant, Hilarious Exercise in Empathy

Weatherman Phil Connors is a terrible person who is allergic to fun. While the infectiously happy citizens of Punxsutawney celebrate Groundhog Day with joyous singing and dancing, Phil sneers at their festivities, bullies his camera crew, and revels in his narcissism in the deadpan way that only the most hardened egomaniac can. It's almost a stroke of divine punishment that a sudden blizzard hits and prevents him from leaving town. After a desperate search for a way out of this backwater hive of Midwestern nice, Phil accepts his fate and retires to a room in the Cherry Street Inn, where he awakes the next day to go about his life in the same, self-absorbed way he always has.

Two days pass, and he's still unmoved by the happiness of those around him, ready to face the day with that familiar lack of enthusiasm. He gets out of bed, and you can almost feel the bedsprings relax from not having to support the weight of his awfulness anymore. But to his surprise, everything that happened to him the day before is inexplicably happening again in exactly the same way, almost like he's living in a time loop. That would be the ultimate punishment for such an impatient egomaniac, but it's not possible, is it? Is it?

Arguably, the greatest strength of Groundhog Day is that it can show you the same things repeatedly and make them more interesting each time. It wants Phil to experience that same irritation over and over again so that he can grow as a person – or not – and try variously successful things to win the heart of Rita, a news producer he has the hots for. He's rewarded with everything from romantic escapades to repeated slaps across the face. Phil may be reliving the most irritating day of his life over and over, but he gets to decide what to do about it. While he initially takes advantage of both the time loop and the people in it, something in him begins to change. Perhaps there is a spark of kindness in his heart, a small part of him that this inexplicable incident has finally awoken? No, it couldn’t be.

The pacing of this movie is decisive, slowing down when we as the audience need to learn something, and speeding up when it’s just repeating things the time loop has already familiarized us with. It knows we know what will happen next and keeps us guessing what it will look and feel like next time, to uncomfortably happy and often-hilarious effect. Groundhog Day is infectiously cheerful in the same way that a Midwestern coffee shop can be. Nevertheless, it also evokes deep emotions of loneliness, desperation, and a yearning for something or someone that we cannot have. It is a happy but emotionally mature movie, one that allows us to relive memories that we can all relate to over and over and over again.

From the very beginning, we see how disillusioned Phil is with his job, his coworkers, and even his very existence. This movie plays his job sickness for laughs, and Bill Murray’s slightly over-the-top performance really sells its biting sarcasm. His news partner, Rita, is a great counterbalance to his embittered spirit, a kind, sweet, and genuinely likable woman who always has an answer to his orneriness that either soothes him or makes him more ornery because he knows she’s right. He often chooses to be a terrible person in the face of reasons not to, and it’s both funny and a little sad. This is a brilliantly acted movie with a wonderful cast and an intelligent sense of comedy that never has to try too hard.

Groundhog Day isn’t asking you to laugh at it, and that’s a huge part of what makes it so funny. This movie isn’t begging for scraps; it's too busy paying attention to its tiniest details and making us care about them. This is an original screenplay, and I am amazed by both its creativity and its execution. The repetition of Phil’s days is strange, a little unsettling, and very funny, with the pacing of each go-around changing each time slightly, giving the movie a sense of urgency. It understands that you only need to see something a few times before you get the point, and it rewards you for paying attention.

I love the patterns this movie establishes with its storytelling. Grumpy Phil is always awoken by the same alarm, one laced with the banter of those annoyingly happy talk show hosts. He is always having the same conversations with the same people. He is always stepping in the same deep puddle and soaking his pant leg, that is, until he wises up and learns to start stepping over it. And all this time, he’s the only person who realizes something is wrong. That’s the point of the movie, and though this repetition could become monotone, the movie plays it with enough verve to remain mysterious and amusing instead. It does the same thing over and over again, a bit differently each time, as Phil learns more and more about the people in his life.

Over time, this movie begins to change Phil profoundly as he relives his life and mistakes repeatedly, and it can be surprisingly touching, especially for a comedy. It shifts from farce to introspective drama without undermining its goals, turning Phil from a selfish, embittered person into a man who actually begins to care, if nothing else, about how other people feel about him. The repetitions move from amusing to profound, and Groundhog Day slowly evolves from what could be called a gimmick by a more cynical soul into a movie with both heart and brains to spare. It could be one of the most well-balanced movies I’ve ever seen. I think of it as an exercise in empathy, one that wordlessly repeats the same message over and over, showing rather than just telling us how it wants us to feel. 

Groundhog Day is just as smart and lovable as it is funny. It is heartwarming, kind, and hilarious, the sort of movie that feels like a warm hug when so many others only want to be a cynical criticism of either you or others. The best thing is that it doesn’t lose itself in being nice. Its thoughtfulness is astounding, an intricately knitted-together tapestry that slowly builds to a crescendo unlike any other. You can almost see the gears turning in its head as it builds on its concepts and ideas, as if they were bricks in a wall, over and over and over again.

Groundhog Day - 10/10

James 4:13-17