The ancient Greek poet Archilochus famously wrote, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one great thing,” and critics and philosophers still argue the meaning.
But if we shift that notion to holiday-themed films, we can say, “Christmas appears in many films, but Groundhog Day appears in one great film.”
That film, of course, is “Groundhog Day,” starring Bill Murray as weatherman Phil Connors trapped in Punxsutawney, Pa., when the titular day repeats itself for him in an apparently endless loop.
Phil encounters the same people and events each time the day repeats. Any changes he makes — even his own death — have been erased when he wakes up at the beginning of the new same day.
But Phil can learn things and can improve his own skills and personality, and that is exactly what he does until he gets everything just right.
The plot trope of a character continually repeating the same day had its most iconic film appearance in “Groundhog Day.”
Since its release in 1993, the film has achieved the status of a comedy classic and ranks 34th in the American Film Institute’s list of America’s 100 Funniest Comedies, and the term “groundhog day” has come to designate the concept of endless repetition.
Subsequent films in various genres have exploited the same idea. So if you enjoy “Groundhog Day,” you could watch it over and over again, or you could see how the basic concept (minus Phil the weatherman and the groundhog) plays out in a different comedy, romance, slasher or science-fiction film.
Neither the Phil nor the audience ever discovers why or how he became trapped in time.
The science-fiction variants all provide explanations, although saying that a time-bending gizmo causes it really does not add much beyond validating the film as science fiction and relieving the audience of getting hung up trying to figure it out.
The best of the sci-fi variants are “Source Code” (2011), with Jake Gyllenhaal as a wounded vet sent back repeatedly to a terrorist attack to prevent an even worse disaster, and “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014), starring Tom Cruise as an Army officer who is repeatedly killed trying to halt an alien invasion in Europe.
Other science fiction takes on this theme but with the stakes reduced to a handful of characters trying to return to the normal time stream rather than prevent large-scale catastrophes (and with much smaller casts and lower budgets) are “ARQ” (2016) and “Prometheus Trap” (2013). Both have much smaller casts and lower budgets, and the latter is totally unrelated to Ridley Scott’s 2012 “Prometheus.”
“Happy Death Day” (2017) takes the repeating time loop idea into the obvious horror genre of slasher film, albeit with strong comic elements, as Jessica Rothe’s stereotypical sorority girl tries to figure out just who is constantly killing her on her birthday (and becomes a better person in the process).
The 2019 sequel “Happy Death Day 2U” takes the story back into sci-fi territory, however, with even more comic elements. As of last November, a third film in the series was reported to be in the works.
The purely comic “Naked” (2017), actually a remake of a 2000 Swedish film, has an unclad Marlon Wayans character repeatedly experiencing the hour preceding his wedding, with the pealing of the church bells resetting him to his initial naked return to consciousness in an elevator.
There’s even a Christmas movie that employs this plot — “12 Dates of Christmas” from 2011 (not to be confused with the 2020 TV dating series of the same title). Here, Amy smart plays a young woman who finds herself reliving the same Christmas Eve blind date 12 times.
The 2019 Netflix series “Russian Doll,” created by Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler, was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning three, and is set for a second season once production picks up again after the pandemic.
The first season followed video game designer Nadia Vulvokov (Lyonne) as she keeps getting killed after leaving her 30th birthday, party only to find herself right back at the same party. The situation becomes even more complicated, though, when she meets Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett), who is experiencing his own recurring deaths in the same night.
But the most mind-blowing Groundhog Day film variant has to occur in the 2006 Japanese anime series “The Melancholy of Hiruhi Suzumiya” — not so much for how the cycle works out, but for how it is presented.
Hiruhi is an imaginative high school girl who, unbeknownst to her, has godlike powers to alter reality. An alien, a time traveler and a psychic have all joined her high school club to keep an eye on her and try to keep things normal.
In one sequence of weekly half-hour episodes, known to fans as the “Endless Eight,” the friends spend the last two weeks of their summer vacation together, getting part-time jobs, going to a traditional festival, swimming and generally having a good time, especially Hiruhi, who organized it all and is sorry to see it all end as school begins.
So it doesn’t. With no explanation, everything repeats in each of eight episodes (over eight weeks!), with only minor changes — someone wears a different swim suit one time, their festival games have slightly different outcomes, not everyone always signs up for the same job.
Unless you binge the eight episodes in one go or have an eidetic (photographic) memory, you would have little chance of spotting those differences. It might well be the boldest gambit ever tried in a TV series; at least it’s hard to imagine anything like that happening in any American TV series.
In any case, these “Groundhog Day” films may just be the perfect viewing fare for these pandemic times when most people are staying at home, doing pretty much the same thing every day, and maybe losing track of just what day it is.
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January 31, 2021 at 10:00PM
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Richard J. Leskosky | Perfect viewing fare for these 'Groundhog Day' times - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette
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