"Groundhog Day" on acid

Rating: Null/10 (1 April 2001)

On leaving the theater, I was wishing that I did have short-term memory loss. What I did have instead was a headache.
While it might seem that the movie is artistically cut with random sequences of plot cleverly interwoven, in fact the structure is quite formalized. Starting end to beginning, we see overlapping sequences of equal time slices of the story. It's a gimmick and little more. It is designed to keep the audience off balance and trying to figure out the story until the end.
However, even after you sort them all out, the pieces don't really fit. There are a number of events in the movie that appear to be totally unmotivated. They don't seem to fit in with the main story or with any of the side stories either. There are a couple of mcguffins that are never really dealt with.
While it's fun to contemplate the nature of memory and reality, the fact remains that this is a mystery story which is every bit as much a mystery at the end as it was at the beginning.