Not a slob movie like "Meatballs" and not really "Rushmore" but really something

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2007)

I have seen this many times and one thing I can say about Bill Murray is that he must have been kicking himself that he wasn't doing something like this much sooner instead of treading water through most of the 90's in such failures as "Ghostbusters 2" and later "The Man Who Knew Too Little". Later he had a spectacular comeback in "Rushmore" but if he had continued making this kind of fascinating films he could have eased his transition to "exciting character actor" much faster.
This is such a great premise: A man living the same day over and over again and to top it off, a day that he thinks is one of the worst days of his life. If the film had taken a direction in which the Murray character was a nice person it wouldn't have been as much fun as when we learn that he has contempt for almost everything in his life. This character is a variation on the character Murray played in "Scrooged" but as we go through his transformation to "nice" we sort of buy it this time. In "Scrooged" the transformation was a lot more forced.
Add to that, a brilliant performance by Stephen Tobolowsky as Ned Ryerson. It's hard to play annoying and still make it funny but Tobolowsky is a pure treat to watch here. And as the icing on the cake we get Chris Elliott in his least memorable performance and I mean that as a good thing. Andie McDowell is sweet and cute but she is totally believable as a character who doesn't have a clue about Murray's situation and still thinks that there is something familiar about the whole thing she experiences in this one day.
I am not saying that this is a masterpiece but it is easy to see why the director Harold Ramis and Murray was such a great partnership. Ramis knows how to build a scene and he knows comedy. Still, the movie tends to drag in the scenes that are supposed to be serious and the movie kind of ends abruptly after Murray wakes op next to Andie McDowell. But this has absolutely been my favorite Murray film ever since I can remember. The groundhog is cute too.