Groundhog Day

Plot synopsis:
On February 1, self-centered and sour TV meteorologist Phil Connors (Bill Murray), news producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott) from fictional Pittsburgh television station WPBH-TV9 travel to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities with Punxsutawney Phil, the Groundhog. Having grown tired of this assignment, Phil grudgingly gives his report during the festival and parade.After the celebration concludes, a blizzard develops that Connors had predicted would miss them, closing the roads and shutting down long-distance phone services, forcing the team to return to Punxsutawney. Connors awakens the next morning, however, to find it is February 2 again, and his day unfolds in almost exactly the same way. Connors can change his behavior, but other people do and say the same things they did and said the previous day, unless Connors changes something. He is aware of the repetition, but everyone else seems to be living February 2 for the first time. This recursion repeats the following morning and the one after that, and over and over again. For Connors, Groundhog Day begins each morning at 6:00 A.M., when he wakes up in his room in a Victorian bed and breakfast. His clock radio is always playing the same song, Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe." His memories of the "previous" day are intact, but he's trapped in a seemingly endless time loop, repeating the same day in the same small town.After briefly trying to rationalize his situation, and then thinking he is insane, Connors takes advantage of learning the day's events and the information he is able to gather about the town's inhabitants, and finds that his actions have no long-term consequences for himself. He revels in this situation for a time: seducing beautiful women, stealing money, even driving drunk and experiencing a police chase. However, his attempts to seduce his producer, Rita, are met with repeated failures. He begins to tire of, and then dread, his existence, starting the day by smashing the alarm clock and professing the inanity of Groundhog Day as a holiday in his newscast. In a vain attempt to break the cycle, he kidnaps Phil the Groundhog. After a police pursuit, Connors drives a stolen truck into a quarry, causing both man and rodent to die in a fiery explosion; but the loop does not stop. He commits suicide several more times. He electrocutes himself, lets a truck hit him on the road, and jumps from a tall building (other attempts are alluded to) but mere death cannot stop the day from repeating. After he dies, he simply wakes up listening to Sonny & Cher in the same bed, on the same day, over and over again.He initially tries to seduce Rita by learning as much as he can on a daily basis. First he asks what she wants in a man: someone who is humble, kind, generous, courageous, and sensitive; someone who likes children; someone who loves his mother and plays a musical instrument. He learns what she likes (rocky road ice cream, sweet vermouth, French poetry) and what she doesn't like (white chocolate) and pretends to share her tastes. This also fails consistently; in scene after scene, Rita slaps him before the night is over. However, he is able to befriend her in a more sincere fashion. He tells her of his circumstances -- how he is reliving the day over and over again -- and manages to convince her of the truth with his extensive knowledge of events to come, the lives of the Punxsutawney townspeople, and Rita herself.He opens his heart to Rita, and her advice helps him to gradually find a goal for his trapped life: as a benefactor to others. He cannot, in a single day, bring others to fulfill his needs but he can achieve self-improvement by educating himself on a daily basis. After seeing an elderly homeless man die, Connors vows that no one will die on "his" day and performs many heroic services each and every repeating day, including performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking man and saving a little boy who falls from a tree. However, he becomes despondent at being unable to save the homeless man, despite trying to get him medical care. When he demands to see the man's medical chart, a nurse tells him "sometimes people just die." "Not today," Connors replies, but he never manages to prevent it.Though the film does not specify the number of repetitions, there is enough time for Connors to learn many complex skills, such as how to play jazz piano, speak French, sculpt ice, and memorize the life story of almost everyone in town. He also masters the art of flipping playing cards into an upturned hat, which he offhandedly suggests takes six months.(According to Danny Rubin, who shares screenwriting credit with the director, the intent in the original script was for the time-frame of Connors' repeating days to be ambiguous, but longer than a single lifetime. The studio objected to this, asking that it be reduced to two weeks. Director Harold Ramis tried to leave the time-frame loop ambiguous as how many times Connors re-lives February 2, but it is strongly speculated by Connors (and the viewers) to be at least 10 years.)Eventually, Connors enhances his own human understanding which, in return, makes him an appreciated and beloved man in the town. Phil is able to befriend almost everyone he meets during the day, using his experiences to save lives and help the townspeople. In the process, he gets closer to Rita. He crafts a report on the Groundhog Day celebration so eloquent that all the other stations turn their microphones to him. After the big Groundhog Day evening dance, Rita and Phil retire together to Phil's room. They believe that if Rita's there, the cycle may be interrupted. He wakes the next morning in bed with Rita (they're both still fully clothed) and finds the time loop is broken; it is now February 3. Phil is a different person than he was on February 1 and, after going outside, Phil and Rita talk about living in Punxsutawney together. Connors suggests: "We'll rent to start."The closing song is "Almost Like Being in Love" from Brigadoon, a musical which also dealt with a village trapped in time.

Tags: entertaining, comedy, boring, fantasy, cult, alternate reality, magical realism, cute, clever, feel-good, psychedelic, humor, satire, romantic, alternate history

Review:
For me, no movie has so perfectly united hilarity with profundity as "Groundhog Day," which happens to be my favorite movie of all time.Superficially, this film belongs roughly in the same genre as "All of Me" and "Liar Liar," comedies in which a character becomes the victim of some weird supernatural fate and must adapt to the insane logic of the situation.
I can't imagine any other approach having worked for this film, where the world is going crazy around Phil the weatherman, Murray's hard-edged character who keeps his emotions bottled up.
Throughout the rest of the film, he'll deliver similarly muted lines to describe his situation, like "My years are not advancing as fast as you might think." It's striking that a man who has all the time in the world would choose his words so carefully, but it reflects a well-conceived screenplay.In this comedy, the laughs are reinforced by repetition.
"Groundhog Day," however, works uniquely well because the situation gets increasingly absurd and Phil gets increasingly desperate with each day that fails to pass.The film would have fizzled out quickly had it spent the entire hour-and-a-half showing Phil meeting the same people and doing the same things time and again.
I mean: what other romantic comedies are there where the protagonist commits suicide and you just have to laugh?I've watched 'Groundhog Day' countless times and, without a doubt, I will watch it again and again (or for as long as I keep waking up to that nerve-wrecking song by Sonny & Cher).
It is so rare that a film's jokes seem just as fresh more than a decade later, but I believe that is because the theme underlying the humor will never go out of fashion.The acting was terrific, and I now think this is Bill Murray's best work (though I didn't take it seriously when I first saw the film.) But the screenplay is the one of the finest ever written.
In Harold Ramis's "Groundhog Day" (1993), an intriguing comedy about repeating the past, Bill Murray is Phil Connors, an arrogantly self-centered and cynical TV weatherman, sent for the fifth time to the small town of Punxsutawney, PA to cover the Groundhog ceremony held every February 2nd.
I love this movie  not only it is one of the best, most original, clever and funniest comedies I've seen, it also makes you think of the serious questions.
I rank Groundhog Day with Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Waking Life, Synecdoche New York, Tokyo Story, Ikiru as one of the moves that has the capacity to change.It is anything but a preachy film as the "intro" to the review might suggest.
It also has a very clever concept, neatly brought to the screen by actor-turned-director Harold Ramis (who starred alongside Murray in the Ghostbusters films).Pittsburgh weather-man Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is sent on assignment to Punxatawney, where on Groundhog Day each year the locals have a tradition of consulting the groundhog to find out if spring is imminent or if they should prepare for 6 more weeks of winter.
And so it goes - every time Phil gets up, it's still February 2nd and he seems destined to be stuck in the same day for the rest of eternity.It seems early on in the proceedings that the film might run out of steam and inspiration.
The characters and actors alone are great enough to recommend this movie, but the truth is, I cannot think of a better story to throw someone like Bill Murray into.
But, as this story teaches us, having an attitude like that can get you in big trouble.Harold Ramis, director of "Analyze This," star of "Stripes," directed "Groundhog Day." Bill and he are old pals, and it sure shows.
But what is good about it is that while making a fun movie they didn't forget to come up with an interesting and audience-catching tale.Another thing that is great about "Groundhog Day" is that Phil Connors does what we would do.
It's kind of hard to pinpoint what makes 'Groundhog Day' work just right- many movies have great premises, some even a bit more ambitious than this one (though not as heartfelt, maybe) but fail.
While Christmas and Halloween have their annual holiday movies, who would have thought that Groundhog Day would have a movie of its own.A terrific (family) movie, Bill Murray stars as a sullen / sarcastic news reporter who is stuck living the same day over and over again....until he gets it right.
I don't know anything about Danny Rubin other than his version of the script had Andi MacDowell also reliving Groundhog Day along with Murray's Phil, the slimy weatherman for a Pittsburgh TV station.
Phil Connors, a cynical and unbearable journalist goes like every year in a small town in Pennsylvania to report on "Groundhog Day", it means the beginning of the spring.
Moreover, Ramis described his main character by mocking at him a little.Of course, the evolution followed by Murray is a little predictable (scornful at the beginning, he will succeed in becoming nice at the end of the film and in finding love with Rita) and you easily guess the message that Ramis tries to put across.
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.
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.
( really I ask myself, the only thing that was different that was the date) I think a lot of people live in groundhog day, doing the same thing again and again, not taking the best out of life.
It's shown more like something as natural as the weather, something that just happened.--------------The only great film the director Harold Ramis ever made, "Groundhog day" was until recently the highest marked Murray film on the site rotten-tomatoes.com with extremely high average grade of 8.1/10.
The transformation of his personality is fun to watch in this film and gives it a sweet ending that was popular with audiences.You would think a movie with this plot - the same day reoccurring day after day - would grow thin in a hurry but it doesn't.
The screenwriters and actors all made it clever and fun to view each "new day." All the characters from Murray to female lead Andie MacDowell to the supporting actors do a great job of keeping the story fresh.
No your Bill Murray in Groundhog Day one of the finest comedy films to ever grace the screen.
He wakes every morning in the same place at the same time on the same day.This movie will have you laughing, crying and going out of your mind, thanks to brilliant performances from Andie MacDowell and Bill Murray.This movie simply has to be seen by everyone.
You see his perfect play very good in the scene when they build the snowman the second time - the constrained way he acts, when he falls down to the ground and tries to come closer to Rita as naturally as the day before.
Grumpy misanthrope TV weather man Phil Connors (Murray) is once again sent out to Punxsutawney to cover the Groundhog Day festivities.
However, the ace up Harold Ramis' (director) sleeve is that the film is more than a comedy, it is also an intelligent character study, a message movie and it also doesn't lack for dramatic purpose, often proving to be a moving experience once the tickled rib pain begins to subside.
It's a picture as deep in human awareness as it is rich with comedy value.Andie MacDowell as Rita, Phil's producer and object of his lust throughout the story, proves to be surprisingly good foil for Murray's comedic ebullience.
One of the most well-known Bill Murray films, a movie that defined a whole subgenre of time travel fiction – the so called "Groundhog Day Loop" – while also being a sweet love story in its own right.
'Groundhog Day' is right up there with the best work Bill Murray has ever done, and it's also one of the best comedies ever made too.The plot is simple, and yet complex at the same time.
Bill Murray's character goes on a journey to become a better man, doing some pretty dark things along the way, and yet we as an audience go along with it and will him to do well.There are lots of lovely moments throughout, with the comedy being intertwined with drama and poignancy perfectly.I highly suggest that you watch this film, because it is one that's message stays with you long after the final credits..
This is an excellent movie because it shows some of the most important life lessons we can only learn in times of desperation: that we need to seize the day and strive to become the best we can possibly be, because it's the only thing that can get us out of the routine that we fall into in life.
How all of us usually one time or other complains about our life being stuck into a routine and living the same day again & again,well our protagonist Mr.great bill Murray finds himself in the same situation here but in a more twisted way.
However, I think that for some reason, the people that gravitate toward this film also tend to be "karma sympathizers", slightly Hindu, or at least appreciate the spiritual parallels.If someone as cynical as Bill (Phil) can be redeemed on the day where for thousands of years, a small little animal has to choose between the dark and the light, than anyone watching knows they too can go out and be a better person.
I had forgotten it was Paxsutawney Phil's day to shine till I looked at the news today, but just remembering that film, and its story line makes me want to go out and do something nice for my kids today.
Most comedies he's done are pretty great - including, of course, Groundhog Day -, and even some of the mediocre films he's done get elevated by his presence.Now, Groundhog Day has a complicated premise, but it deals with it in a very simple, straightforward manner that nevertheless makes one think, laugh and admire what the filmmakers are conveying.
There's no place for bathroom jokes and profanity in this movie - in fact, this is one film that proves comedies don't have to be R-rated in order to be hilarious.I also like that it doesn't provide with any explanations for Phil's predicament - after all, this is a comedy, and since we see everything from Phil's point of view and he doesn't really have a way of learning the reason for the time loop, then the audience doesn't have to know it either.
It deals with romance, comedy, everyday-situations being repeated - in subtly different ways - over and over again and, of course, the redemption of Murray's character, who starts the movie as a total creep and ends it as a wiser, gentler man.
Considering most comedies nowadays are either boring retreads or R-rated endeavors (which are really funny on their own right - see Tropic Thunder or Pineapple Express) that can't be enjoyed by the whole family, it's always a good idea to watch such a clean, fun and particularly smart movie like Groundhog Day..
GROUNDHOG DAY shows how we shouldn't take the important things for granted, that we should make the most of the time we are given on Earth, and that if the world feels like a terrible place, the changes must come from within yourself.It's a movie which different people will interpret different meanings from.
It tells the story of Phil Connors (Bill Murray), an arrogant and egocentric TV weatherman, who goes on an assignment in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where he mysteriously gets forced to live through the same day over and over, apparently with no possibility to break the loop.
If you are constantly angry at the world then search within yourself, because that's most likely where the problem exists.GROUNDHOG DAY is Harold Ramis's greatest movie yet.
Not many movies have you feel proud to be a human being by the end, and even less of them leave you with a desire to self improve and be a better person, Groundhog day is luckily one of them, and you definitely owe yourself to watch it.
No body however can deny its greatness, although it did not win any award -even in the Oscar (may be nominated in that year as I remembered).Groundhog Day tells us quite an ordinary story: a cynical weather reporter has to repeat the same day Feb 2 in a little town he hates most, so he becomes a god, becomes immortal and wildered by this eternal and miserable day- and finally a traditional but never cheesy happy-end.
Time goes on and on, everyday he repeats these routines cordially and tirelessly until the miracle happens- he finally makes Groundhog Day an end with embracing his love around arms.
He finds himself stuck there, reliving the same day over and over again, and therefore able to manipulate the events he knows are coming.If this had remained a straight comedy things may have worked, but the film decides to cloak itself in a social message aura and tries to make some far-reaching preachy comments.
The performances are good, and the fact Bill manipulates his producer to fall in love with him by acting in a way which would please her, after secretly finding out her preferences and charms from a previous Groundhog Day. Confused yet?If not you should be, the film is very confusing, and after a bit you think the day will never end, it is an astounding culmination of hilarious comedy, touching romance and outstanding acting that hits you with great effect.Its got action, romance, comedy and drama its funny, yet can still be saddening, so many emotions packed into one film make this a classic.
He and Bill Murray had a falling out over "Groundhog Day" that ended their collaboration on films.
I don't know if anyone else has tried to count the number of times that Phil wakes up to the same day, Feb. 2 in this film.
I wouldn't normally dissect a film this much, but "Groundhog Day" is such a unique concept for a movie that it invites this sort of circumspection and analysis.Here are a few choice lines that alone give a laugh each time.
Really, really close.""Groundhog Day" is one of the best comedies of all time.
But the differences between these two fantasy movies is that in Groundhog Day, the only way to get out of the infinite cycle is to change person's attitude towards life, which makes this movie not a simple comedy, but a terrific movie with full philosophy on life.Often we hear the adage, "It is just a film".
The movie is based on such a powerful thematic idea - that of reliving a day over and over again until you get it right - that it deservers to become the kind of classic story, like A Christmas Carol, that is remade periodically every few years to see what a different cast and director can make of it.For instance, the movie is in the comedy/drama/romance genres, but I felt the comedy should have given way a bit more clearly to drama when the emotional turning point is reached; but the point is that I cared enough about the idea to be interested in thinking about improving its execution.
Featuring great performances from Murray and Mcdonald, and fantastic direction from Harold Ramis Groundhog Day is a movie that will still be watched a hundred years from now.
Featuring great performances from Murray and Mcdonald, and fantastic direction from Harold Ramis Groundhog Day is a movie that will still be watched a hundred years from now.
Its hard to make a movie that repeats the same day funny and Bill Murray made it funny his performance was very good.
Murray is excellent as Phil, the disenfranchised, broken down, sarcastic weather man who finds himself going over groundhog day eternally.
The story is very original and it's concept about Phil trying to get back to Groundhog Day while it's being repeated over and over again is excellent in every level.
It is true that it's the kind of movie that really does benefit from repeat viewings.Bill Murray makes the most of a weighty role as Phil Connors, egocentric, wise ass weatherman who travels to the Pennsylvania community of Punsxutawney to cover its annual Groundhog Day ceremony.
When you ask someone to think of a Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day is usually the answer they give.
There is a great scene when Murray dresses as a cowboy with a date that is classic; and the way he is able to handle the Brink's guards is also very humorous.Also fun to watch in the movie is the talented Andie MacDowell whose character of Rita is completely unaware that it is the same day for Phil.
Written by Danny Rubin and directed by Harold Ramis (Murray's co-star in Ghostbusters), this film was almost an experiment to see if Hollywood would let them make a movie in which the characters relive the same day over and over again.
Phil is a weatherman who is sent to Pennsylvania to cover the story for groundhog day with a beautiful woman, Rita who he's had a crush on for a long time.
But he starts to realize maybe he could do some good in the world before worrying about getting Rita.Groundhog Day is one of those films that is very charming and the story is really cute.