Interesting dramady for all ages.

Rating: 8/10 (5 July 2015)

The dramady genre is defined almost to perfection by this movie. It's not the most gut wrenching comedy you'll see, but it has a few heavy scenes that most comedies don't. I think they did a pretty good job on it because there are a lot of places where they could have slipped up and didn't. Two examples are 1) not trying to give an explanation for why the time lapse happens since that would have created another storyline with a lot of room for error, and 2) keeping it to a PG rating, because it probably have detracted from the overall effect if we had thirty more scenes of Phil doing everything he would never dare do normally. If you took this exact same concept and put it into a modern movie, it wouldn't be as good. We pretty much saw this exemplified by Click, which had a similar feel to Groundhog's Day even though it was kind of the inverse concept.
Our protagonist is egotistical and slightly unlikeable weatherman Phil Conners. We get to see nearly every side of his personality as he reacts to his plight of being stuck in one of his least favorite days of the year. Regardless of how any give viewer feels about his personality, almost everyone will be able to sympathize with Phil to an extent at one point or another. Some people might not like it that Phil ends up a nicer guy at the end and does a 180, but I would argue that it's completely plausible. We can approximate that Phil was stuck in Groundhog's Day for at least a year, probably much more. And he had plenty of time to think along with plenty to think about. Besides that we see his progression from irresponsibility, to depression, to self improvement and generosity. So I think his maturing was completely plausible, though not inevitable. We get to know some of the other characters fairly well like Larry the cameraman, Phil's high school classmate Ned Ryerson, the lady who runs the hotel, and obviously Phil's new co-worker and love interest Rita. I read a review that said Rita was portrayed as too perfect, which might be true, but it might also just be that Phil is so insensitive to her that we don't notice her shortcomings. Besides, for all we know she just woke up on the right side of the bed that particular day and was a horrible person the rest of the time.
The comedy is mostly comprised of the different ironic situations Phil gets into from repeating the same day and how he reacts to the differently each day. There are a few good one-liners, but there is relatively little verbal comedy for the most part.
You might get annoyed with the repetition of the different events, as Phil does, but it's not very annoying considering that they have to repeat some events several times. This reflects pretty well on the screenwriter(s) with the way they gave the audience enough information, but didn't repeat it. The way they executed the progression of Phil trying to win over Rita was well done, along with him learning the piano and the general knowledge that he gains of the Punxatawny (probably spelled that wrong) residents. It doesn't come off as spectacular, but it's notable that there weren't any problems with those scenes.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good story or plot basis. The acting's fine, and you could argue that Bill Murray has an above par performance. It is properly labeled as a comedy, but there are enough serious dramatic elements that you shouldn't choose it if you're looking for strictly comedy. It's one of very few movies that can be enjoyed by all ages without being completely kid geared, so you can enjoy it equally with your family or on your own. If you don't like Rita's character or the general story after about forty minutes, it's probably not worth your time to finish it out. Overall Rating: 8.2/10.