Classics Review: Groundhog Day

-

 

                                                                            Photo belongs to Paramount pictures


        Happy Groundhog Everyone!  I thought it be fun to take a look at the 1993 classic film.

     This film is notoriously the last team up of director Harold Ramis and star Bill Murray. Together they did "Stripes" and the "Ghostbusters" film. A fourth film seemed like a no brainer. Stories from the set were not pleasant. Bill Murray really did not like the film. He hated the overall tone of the film. He thought the tone was not right. He thought it should contemplate one's existence. It did not go the way that he wanted, so he made people's lives hell on set. It was reported that Murray was also concerned with the fact that people thought he was only good in Harrold Ramis movies. To top it all off Murray was going through a divorce during filming. It's hard to believe that a movie like this was so unpleasant.

 For those who do not know, here is the plot. A self-centered weatherman, (Bill Murray), finds himself in a time loop on Groundhog Day, and the day keeps repeating until he gets it right.

  I think two things work in this movie, together to make it great. The script by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis knows how to tow its line. It is very funny when it needs to be and very serious when it needs to be. Discussing the behavior of Murray on set also has a point here. His performance as on the edge Phil, is great and makes being stuck in a time loop believable. Him putting his frustration into the character and story pays off.      

    Being in 2023, it is difficult to look at any sort of time loop troupe and not roll your eyes. So, the question is, how does this work? I think that if you can look past the fact that it has been used countlessly since 1993, its fun and original. If you want to be super critical, I will say that the fact that it does not feel self-referential makes it feel fresh after 30 years.

 I watch this movie every Groundhog Day. If you haven't seen it, take a look, you won't be disappointed.

GRADE:A

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unfriended: Dark Web

-
Image
    I would be the first to admit, when the original "Unfriended" dropped in 2014, I was not expecting to enjoy it. I was pleasantly surprised with what I saw. I always thought though, there is no need to make a sequel. Alas.. we fast forward to 2018, and there is a sequel.     The story revolves around Matias, who finds a great laptop, in his local internet cafe's lost and found. Since it has been there for weeks, he takes it. Later that night, while playing a game night over Skype, he begins to discover some terrible things.    One of the problems that plagued both of the films was the acting. In most of these cases, the actors from these films, do not have a lot of experience. It unfortunately, caries over to this film. When the story got to the climax, the line delivery got a little rough.    What really worked for the first one, was essentially, everyone was a terrible person. As the story progresses, you find out the terrible things t...
Read more

Triple 9

-
Image
     When it comes to cop films, for the most part, I tend to be a huge fan. When this came out, I was not very sure what to expect from it because there was such little press for it.     A professional group of thieves lead by Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor) does the biding of Irina Vlaslov ( Kate Winslet). The guys want out of her buiding, but her being a big player in the Russian mafia, she gets what she wants. She drags the crew into a final heist with a huge payoff, what could possibly go wrong?        The biggest thing that hurt this film was the scope was so huge for this film with how many characters it has. It is hard to care or, for that matter get to know any Of the characters when the time spent with them is so short. On top of that, this film does not go in any new directions for the crime thrillers. I feel like if they may have added twenty to thirty minutes to get to know all the characters it may have added an edge it do...
Read more

The Ridiculous Six

-
Image
   The Ridiculous Six is the start of the long contract that Adam Sandler signed with Netflix. It comes in the form of the spoof of the classic Magnificent 7.      In the story it surrounds White Knife (Adam Sandler) and his seemingly perfect life with the apache tribe. Things get a little messy when his long absent father (Nick Nolte) shows up and is subsequently kidnapped. Fifty thousand dollars is needed to set him free, so White Knife takes it upon himself to rob the terrible people of the West to get his father back. Along the way he finds out that he has many other brothers in the shape of Taylor Lautner, Terry Crews, Rob Schneider, Jorge Garcia, and Luke Wilson.      Through most of the later of Sandler's Carter you could at least count on his movies being entertaining. This film seemed choppy in places when it came to the story. None of the jokes seemed to really work. It's hard to say but Sandler has done so much better even in recent...
Read more