Incredibly deep and also hilarious

Rating: 10/10 (13 June 2005)

"Groundhog Day" is another example of a movie that deserved multiple nominations (and wins) at the Academy Awards. At the time, it was often dismissed as a light fantasy-comedy. But actually Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis wrote an incredibly intelligent, heartwarming, and funny script, and Bill Murray put in the performance of his lifetime.
Phil Connors, played by Murray, is having a bad day. A nearly infinite amount of times. I don't believe the story that the movie takes place over 10 years of reliving the same day; it's clearly implied that it's A LOT more than that, and that's what the screenwriter originally had intended anyway. And this is where the brilliance of both the script and Murray's performance lies; we're not watching the same thing over and over again, because we have as a focal point Phil, who's reliving the day and reacting to it differently each time. The stages he goes through until he finally learns to accept it and try to make something of it are interesting. By the end of the movie he's reached something akin to nirvana, where every move he makes is perfect, and thus he's finally allowed to move on.
We never get an explanation of why this is happening, which only heightens our fascination of it. It seems implied by the ending that something divine is going on; Phil really seems to reach perfection, a state of being, perhaps, a perfect human being, or as close to it as we can get, and that's where the timescale becomes apparent; think how long it would take to achieve such a thing! And all this is masked at first appearance by all the humor going on. At first glance, it really appears to be a screwball comedy (and even as such, it's laugh-out-loud funny), and you can't see the brilliance behind everything. It's a nearly perfect movie, and it's one of my favorites.