I care nothing for the holiday itself. They pull a giant rat out of a hole, and it matters not if he sees his shadow, winter will still continue for another 6 weeks. Now Hedgehog day, I can get behind. But I digress. I'm talking about the 1993 blockbuster comedy hit, Groundhog Day, staring Bill Murray.
If you've just come out of a bomb shelter or woke up from a coma, Groundhog Day tells the tale of a jerkish weather man named Phil Connors who finds himself trapped in a time loop, which just happens to fall on February 2, which is, you guessed it, Groundhog Day. Phil is the only one ware of the time loop so he uses it to do all kinds of things like sleep with hot women, start police chases, and steal money. He just decides to wrongfully take advantage of it because it doesn't matter what he does. Each time he wakes up, it's Groundhog Day again. And Again. At first, Phil is thrilled by the reoccurring events but the ride is short lived as he slips into despair. He searches for ways to end the time loop, mostly through repeated attempts of suicide but each one fails and he's back to square one.
Growing desperate, Phil confides in his coworker, Rita (which he also has the hots for). At first she's skeptical until Phil demonstrates the vast knowledge he's accumulated by giving her the 411 about people around him. Rita's skepticism soon vanishes and she opts to spend the rest of the day with Phil, later encouraging him not to look at the time loop as a curse. From there on, things get better for Phil. Not only does he change for the better, he escapes the time loop and wins Rita's affections.
Groundhog Day is not only a hilarious movie, but an inspirational one. Sure, its a hoot to watch Phil driving with a kidnapped groundhog, fleeing from the fuzz and punching out his annoying former classmate. All that stuff was fun for him for a while, but as mentioned above, he grew tired of that and wanted to escape. He was also unable to win over Rita because he acted selfishly. What I find really amazing about the romance aspect of the film is that, it wasn't until Phil put others first and helped them out that Rita really began to notice him. Phil had only done a 180 in a day's time from Rita's perspective, but for Phil, that took a lot of work, God only knows how much work. By acting selflessly, Rita fell for Phil.
The particular version of Groundhog Day that I picked up is the 15th Anniversary Edtion. I got it for $7.50 at Wal-Mart. There's some nice extras on here like directory commentary, documentaries and such. Some could argue for more, but I'm pleased with what I got. I meant to buy this movie about two years ago, but I never got around to it. I watched this movie a lot when I first saw it back in 1994. It's as great now as it was when I first saw it. Really, everyone should watch/own this one. It's dirt cheap and in my humble opinion, one of the best movies ever made.
Comments
I never understood the meaning of that they do anyway, so ignore the day itself for being plain ridiculous