'Groundhog Day' at 30: A Timeless Classic Breeds a Timeless Concept
- Tyler Hurst
- Feb 8, 2023
- 6 min read
Columbia Pictures/ Rotten Tomatoes
Besides Die Hard there is no movie that has been as influential in breeding copycats than Harold Ramis’ 1993 classic Groundhog Day. The “time loop” concept employed in Ramis' and Danny Rubin’s screenplay has shown such incredible legs that it has even been able to transcend genre. In the 21st century alone we’ve seen Happy Death Day utilize the trend and create a highly profitable hit in the horror realm; Hulu’s Palm Springs used it to imbue new life within the romantic comedy; Even Tom Cruise got in on the fun with his severely underrated sci-fi romp Edge of Tomorrow that turned the concept into an action blockbuster.
If you search “time loop movies” into a search engine 44 examples will pop up alone. You would think by now that the idea has grown tired but this is hardly the case. It seems that at least every 2-3 years we’re getting another spin at a Groundhog Day-esque story, and more often than not, they’re highly successful. Audiences love this story trope because it is as close to perfect as one can be.
While there have been countless imitations, none are able to touch the one that started it all. The one that pitted a flawed man and helped him see the error in his ways. The one that made you believe in Bill Murray as a romantic lead. The one known simply as Groundhog Day.
If you strip Groundhog Day down to its bare bones it reads almost like classic literature. It’s about a man who, while highly successful, treats everyone horribly, and realizes during a winter holiday that he must fix the error in his ways. Remind you of anyone?
Phil, played by Bill Murray, is essentially Ebenezer Scrooge (also previously played by Murray in the form of a modern-day TV executive in Scrooged). However, instead of being haunted by the ghosts of past, present, and future, Ramis’ and Rubin’s script makes Phil live the same day over and over until he is confronted with the one thing he’s never had to do in his entire life.
As Roger Ebert put it in his piece for the Chicago Sun Times in 2005, “He is the only person in the world [who knows he’s living the same day over and over], and after going through periods of dismay and bitterness, revolt and despair, suicidal self-destruction and cynical recklessness, he begins to do something that is alien to his nature. He begins to learn.”
Leave it to Ebert to put it so elegantly and yet, so simple. In layman's terms that is the nature of this story. Take away the nuts and bolts. Take away the nooks and crannies. This is the story about a man learning how to treat people right and change his life for the better. The same reason we always come back to Scrooge is the same reason we always come back to Phil.
Who doesn’t love a redemption story?
Groundhog Day is nothing without the creative collaboration between Ramis behind the camera and Murray in front of it. However, we almost saw something else entirely. During a 2009 Q&A in Chicago, Ramis revealed that he initially wanted Tom Hanks in the lead role.
Hanks told Ramis, “Audiences would have been sitting there waiting on me to become nice, because I always play nice. But Bill’s such a miserable S.O.B. on and offscreen, you didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Once again, Tom Hanks proves to have incredible instincts because that notion is what makes the film work. Most people have an affinity for Murray. He did previously star in Ghostbusters, Stripes, and Caddyshack after all. But while audiences might’ve found him entertaining and his dry-wit endearing, it’s doubtful many saw him on screen and said, “I want to have a beer with that guy!” He’s the bargoer you laugh at from a distance but tend not to get any closer to.
Imagine seeing Hanks in the scene where Phil, Rita (Andie McDowell), and Larry (Chris Elliott) are traveling to Punxsutawney and Phil complains about how much he hates the “hicks” in the small town. You just can’t buy it. Hanks is Woody. Hanks gets Meg Ryan to fall in love with him. But Murray? The scene plays like a Beethoven-composition for Murray’s talents, because more than likely, it didn’t require much acting at all.
Murray has had some iconic parts in his illustrious career, but none like this. Sure, we’d seen him be hilarious with his previous comedy parts in the ‘80s and later showcase dramatic chops with an Oscar nominated performance in 2004’s Lost in Translation. But none showed the perfect harmony of the two and his capabilities as an all-around performer like Groundhog Day.
If Murray is the Michael Jordan of this movie, Andie McDowell is surely the Scottie Pippen. Without her, the film could have transgressed into purely an on-screen excuse for Murray to be a jerk (something that audiences already complained about when he starred in Scrooged) but McDowell keeps the film, and Murray for that matter, grounded. Instead of being constantly annoyed by Phil’s antics, she can't help but laugh at Phil’s prima-donna tendencies. It’s only when he doesn’t want to do his job that she shows signs of anger, but it's always with a sense of control.
When Phil’s time-loop starts, the only thing he isn’t able to bend to his will is Rita. Despite learning all of her tendencies and her favorite things she still refuses to sleep with him. McDowell plays Rita with such a strong, nuanced confidence that you completely buy it. She never falls into entrapments of ditz or loses self-assuredness in her character. She plays it the one way someone could convincingly shut-down a wise-ass who needs coddling: you shatter their charade.
Of course they do end up getting together in the end (this is Hollywood after all) but it's only after he truly earns it. Rita is the one who tells him that his so-called purgatory is only a curse from his skewed perspective. In some ways Rita’s line plays like the Ghost of Christmas Future showing Scrooge his sad grave. Both sequences say the same thing: true happiness comes from kindness. For Phil, that means having Rita in his life and realizing that there’s no time like the present.
The romance between the two leads is what keeps the film grounded in many ways, and it's why so many other time-loop movies go back to this same well. The characters need to find somebody to confide in, after all. Turning that into a romance might come as a cheap for some, but when executed well, there’s nothing like it. Murray and McDowell set the standard and then some.
The film at its core is a comedy. While it has plenty of laughs, the film uses those laughs to showcase more poignant, dramatic themes: existentialism and in some ways, philosophy. Comedy and philosophy don’t always tend to mix well (with the clear exception of NBC’s phenomenal sitcom The Good Place). People come to these movies to laugh. Dissertations about the meaning of life are for a different theater and a different place and Ramis’s film knows this.
“At first, Groundhog Day is a genial, acutely observed comedy about small-town media manners, where everyone lines up year after year to go through the same motions,” Larsen On Film writes. “But when we realize that the mindless “tradition” we’re witnessing is both a foreshadowing of Phil’s approaching time warp and a metaphor for the existential rut that all of our lives run the risk of becoming.”
Makes you think twice about how you’re living your life, doesn’t it?
There are plenty of analyses online that go into the nitty gritty of these themes. This article would be a few thousand more words if it were, but it's not. This is simply one of admiration that a studio comedy pulled something like this off at all.
While Groundhog Day certainly has more on its plate than laughs, its razor-sharp script makes sure you never forget it with a gold-rush of quotable lines and moments.
“This is the one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather,” Phil says with Murray's trademark delivery. Who could forget when Phil and the titular groundhog go on a high speed chase with Phil telling the groundhog, “don’t drive angry.” You could watch the film a million times and still find a new moment to laugh at that hits differently with each viewing.
In many ways, Groundhog Day is a perfect film. There is a reason that you can find it on many “greatest of all time” lists. As Ebert put it, “It unfolds so inevitably, is so entertaining, so apparently effortless, that you have to stand back and slap yourself before you see how good it really is.”
The film rewards multiple viewings. It packs as much punch as art-house critic fodder as it does a rainy day comfort movie. Combined, it feels like the perfect blanket draped over you that leaves nothing uncovered. It’s a shame that it was the last collaboration between Ramis and Murray (due to a classic Murray falling out, of course) because you could make the case that the two were only just beginning to scratch the surface of what their creative collaboration could achieve.
Nevertheless the two went out on a high note and created something that is constantly imitated to this day. Isn't that the mark of great art?
Thirty years later, Groundhog Day is still as special today as it was then. Need any more evidence? Just wait until you’re in line for the next copycat that shows a person living the same day over and over in the name of change.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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