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Groundhog Day (Special Edition) Customer Reviews (70 - 72 of 97 Reviews)

Whatta location!
Groundhog Day was filmed in my hometown, Woodstock Illinois (NOT Pennsylvania)! Yes, this town is really as pretty as seen in the movie. Come visit us sometime...you won't be sorry! Oh, and the movie was pretty good, but I got a little "snoozy" at the repetive nature of it (and,yes, I know it was supposed to be that way). Overall, not a bad flick.

a classic hides in the shadows
Okay, I'm going to have to ask you to bear with me past the opening line of this review : Groundhog Day is perhaps the most underappreciated
movie of the 90s and one of the best comedies since Hollywood's Golden Age, a film Frank Capra would have been proud of making. Did I
lose you? Rolling on the ground laughing? Does the very concept of Bill Murray and Harold Ramis making one of the great films of all time
strike you as too absurd for words? Well, hold on, and try this : forget everything you know about the movie and just listen to a brief
description :

A monstrously self-centered TV personality is sent to small town America to cover a hokey holiday. He's accompanied by a
too-innocent-to-be-believed, but button-cute, producer and a smart-alecky camera man. Trapped by a snow storm, which he had erroneously
predicted would miss the region, our egomaniac is forced to spend the night in town and, when he awakes, finds to his horror that he's reliving
the same day over again. And reliving, and reliving, and reliving.... At first, he takes some enjoyment in the seeming prescience this provides
him and he takes great liberties once he realizes that he will never have to face the consequences for any action he takes, because tomorrow
never comes. Though his producer is quite obviously repelled by his self-centered nature, he eventually discovers that he can worm his way
into her affections by dating her over and over again and discovering her likes and dislikes, since she, of course, remembers nothing of the
prior dates. Yet, even with all this effort, he is unable to win her, because he remains, fundamentally, obnoxious. Forced to confront his own
unpleasantness and unlovability and the essential emptiness of his life, the man, aware now that he hates himself, tries to commit suicide, in
various and sundry ways, but always awakens to greet the dawning of the new/old day. And so now, at last, his efforts turn to
self-improvement, rather than to self-aggrandizement, and to helping others rather than to satisfying his own urges. His dilemma forces him to
move beyond himself and to serve others. Where he once avoided the people of the town like the plague, he is now become an integral part of
their community, and where he once saw the producer as merely an object of his lust, he now proves himself worthy of her love. The next
morning, time resumes its regular progression and he resumes his life, a better man. Honestly, doesn't that sound like a Capra flick, starring
Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur?

In fact, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis have made enough dogs, separately and together, to warrant your healthy skepticism, but Murray's
performance here is generally under control and Ramis seldom stoops to gags and pratfalls. There's a big upside to the nasty edge that Murray
always carries with him; we're prone to forgetting just how dark Jimmy Stewart's screen persona often tended to be, from explosive and
suicidal, like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, to voyeuristic and manipulative, in Rear Window, to domineering and obsessive, in
Vertigo. Andie MacDowell, on the other hand, is a tad too vacuous to counterbalance Murray effectively, but that's a tolerable flaw since it's
very much Murray's movie.

Still not convinced? Here's my last try : how many recent films, nevermind comedies, actually have a story arc where the main character,
instead of going through some process of healing his inner child, or whatever, improves himself by becoming a better member of society?
What's the last comedy you saw that both made you laugh and made you think? (Heck, how many do either?) If you think about it, this movie
runs counter to two of the worst trends in modern culture, the appalling focus on the self, and the annoying tendency to dumb art down so that
it can be marketed across societal and national borders without losing anything in the translation. Make a movie for the purposes of selling it
to teens and to China and you're going to have to go with scatology instead of metaphysics. Thus, it's increasingly rare to find a movie that
requires that your synapses actually be firing, much less one that causes them to fire more quickly.

NBC has done something quite savvy and socially useful in recent years; they've turned It's a Wonderful Life into a Christmas-time event.
Sure it was great when local PBS stations played it incessantly and we all learned the script by heart, but there's something more appealing
about turning it into a shared viewing experience for the nation, one that hundreds of thousands of homes are tuned into at the same time.
We've so few rituals left that bind us together as a community that perhaps one of the best services the television networks can provide is to
establish a few holiday traditions, revolving around movies, or other specials, that they'd show yearly. Besides Wonderful Life and TNT's
Christmas Story marathon and ABC's showing of The Ten Commandments around Passover, someone could show Gettysburg on the 4th of
July; PBS could re-air Eyes on the Prize around Martin Luther King, Jr. Day; show Young Abraham Lincoln on President's Day; etc., etc.,
etc..... And show Groundhog Day you know when--it's a classic, let's treat it like one. No, seriously...

GRADE : A

I enjoy everyone in the cast and every scene is a delight
One of my favorite multiple-watching films. I don't even want to argue whether the film is important or not, great or not, or whatever or not. It is a fun film with a pleasant love story and is full of actors I really enjoy watching. The love story is fun because it is the mirror of the normal film love story. Typically the girl hates the guy but she slowly changes to see what a great guy he is and finally falls for him. Here, Rita (Andie MacDowell - in one of my favorite of her performances) remains the same and it is Phil (Bill Murray - one of his great roles) who slowly learns who he needs to be to win Rita over and finally becomes that person.

While everyone knows the plot of the story by now, I don't want to give it away to the three people left who don't know it. Just let me say that unless you think funny movies cannot have a kind soul, you will like this movie. Frankly, I get awfully tired of the oceans of witless venom passing for wit. This is a movie I am willing to watch anytime at the drop of a hat. There are so many funny scenes, but the image of Bill Murray giving driving instructions to a groundhog as the flee from panicked townsfolk is wonderful.

Enjoy it!

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