This week my wife and I showed our teenage girls a selection of old movie trailers from the 80s and 90s, and amongst the stories of vampires, spies and computer-generated dystopias, the one they were intrigued by was a small, simple “what if”: what if you were trapped reliving the same day, over and over?
Groundhog Day was released in 1993, a Bill Murray/Harold Ramis comedy that became an enduring classic. The plot revolves around weatherman Phil Connors, who is selfish, arrogant and cynical, unexpectedly finding himself reliving Groundhog Day in snowy Pennsylvania. Phil is scared ad confused at first, but soon realises that a world with no consequences means he can treat the small town of Punxsutawney as his personal playground, committing robberies, gorging on food, and romancing every available woman in town. However, his ongoing rejection by pure-hearted producer Rita finally forces the selfish Phil to re-evaluate his existence and put his immortality towards helping others.
The writing in this film is fantastic. Phil’s fake and shallow personality is demonstrated from literally the opening shot, and within the first five minutes the main personality clashes of the film are already established. The film then slows down, taking the audience through “day zero” to again directly demonstrate Phil’s shortcomings in the way he treats the townsfolk. However, as Groundhog Day restarts over and over again, the pace picks up, jumping from event to event as the audience becomes more familiar with Punxsutawney’s residents.
There’s potential for this setup to become boring and repetitive, but Murray is at his comedic best, delivering the almost same lines with small difference in tone and body language to create wildly different results. From childish glee to a suicidal depression, Murray carries the audience through the confusion, tedium and terror of immortality. Andie MacDowell was perfect as Rita, and the dialogue between Rita and Phil serves as powerful milestones in the weatherman’s long road to deliverance.
Phil goes through his own version of the hero’s journey in Groundhog Day, spiralling from selfishness to depression and madness before realising that he has to fix his own shortcomings before he can be return to the world of the living. The core of the story and its message to men is on that was found in many films of this period: forge yourself into something worthy of being loved. In shallower films, this was passed off as “hey, you finally did one good thing, here’s the love interest as a prize,” but Groundhog Day genuinely takes its time to show every painful step of Phil’s atonement, and the film comes across with far more sincerity.
As for my girls? They loved it. They said the film was “funny and sweet without being too preachy,” which I take as a sign of a good show, don’t tell.
Have any other suggestions for the next family movie night? Let me know in the comments below!
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