Groundhog Day (1993)

Before I set out to watch this film, I asked people what they thought about the film. Good positive things was what I got as a response. So going into to Groundhog Day, I was expecting it to be a very good and entertaining film. The film did not let me down. It was funny, charming, quite clever about the whole "living the same day over and over again". and like most stories, has a moral to teach, several life lessons to be honest. Don't give up when life gets hard, you need friends and family in your life to live it to the full, and without consequences, nothing in life matters.

It's a really easy film to follow. We meet a grumpy, arrogant weather man called Phil who, every year, is sent to a town which celebrates the annual Groundhog festival. He is accompanied by a new producer, Rita(the love interest) and his cameraman, Larry(the unlucky sidekick type character). Phil's Groundhog Day is his worst day he's ever experienced. And by the end of it, the crew get hit by a snowstorm and have to stay at the town till he blows over. This storm somehow triggers Phil and the rest of the characters to be stuck reliving the same day, over and over, but Phil is the only chracter aware of this. We get no explanation for how this fantasy-like element of the film happened, but we really don't need one. It just happens, and I was okay with that.

So as the film goes on, Phil relives the same day over and over. At first he wasn't keen on the idea, however he gradually uses it do his advantage as he an do anything, good or bad, because the consequences don't matter, as the day will just reset. Phil steals money, punches an irritating guy, woos women he fancies, eats as much food as possible without \ thought in the world about the consequences because they don't matter. Then he tries to woo Rita, but he can't because he underestimates the challenge of doing so. He spends many days out with her, learning what she likes and dislikes. And he still can't woo her and so he becomes depressed.

This becomes my favourite part of the film. Phil doesn't see his new life as a marvelous gift bestowed upon him anymore, he sees it as a curse, an evil prank. With his new view on life, Phil tries to end it, by killing himself. But each time he does so, the day resets. He kills himself in a new way, and the day resets. This happens over and over again until he accepts that it won't ever end. In a film with a fantasy like element such as reliving the same day over and over, this segment of the film felt very real to me. Injecting realism into fantasy films can really take the magic away from a film, but with the case of Groundhog Day, the filmmaker did an excellent job with it. We really got to witness the negative and positive sides to living the same day day in, day out.

I would definitely recommend this film to everyone. It's a classic.