Groundhog Day(1993) Does What It Does Better Than Its Imitators
And who better than Bill Murray to execute the film?
Yes, I was a late arrival to this joyous masterpiece. As usual, I was roped into sitting with two dogs and two boomers as Bill Murray with brown hair insulted his colleagues with dry wit.
I wasn’t allowed to know what ‘Ground Hog Day’ was and it turns out that it was a rather delicious red herring, how did I not see it coming? Without outright ruining the concept, it has a very similar feel to ‘The Truman Show’, in that a character is dropped into an outlandish situation and causes hilarity as he tries to figure out his predicament.
Now, I’m not simply talking about the film, I wanted to talk about what this film did that scoffs at its competition. The timing of the morning alarm music and the pacing at which ‘Phil’ learned what he could do was so much more thought out and expertly done than I have seen in similar films. The beautiful irony of him shrewdly fixing interactions with people and then continuing to walk into the drain puddle every single time was nothing short of brilliance.
I am not a regular watcher of Bill Murray’s films, but there were moments watching ‘Groundhog Day’ which made me suspect it would have been a less successful film without his own tailored portrayal of his character. He was a character you laughed at his misfortune because of his slowly diminishing arrogance and sureness of himself. His character didn’t change too much for us to warm to him but merely evolved in the smallest of ways. Many films rewrite the character completely to win over an audience, this was nicely done.
The last thing I would bring attention to is the writing of Phil. He made human decisions rather than thought out ones. For instance, you ask 100 people the first thing they would do if they won the lottery, and they would say they would pay debts. Really they would have a banquet, and this character led by these gut decisions which made him relatable and side-splittingly funny.
The concept was a nice idea, and the title was an amusing thing to think back to. Having said that, had this of been done under a different director, with a different style and a different lead, I would bet this film wouldn't have a fraction of the charm that it did.
