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"Well, it's Groundhog Day... again..."
This 1993 film massively popularised the
eponymous trope. With
Bill Murray at his deadpan best and a script that frequently finds new ways to entertain you in this day of repetition, the film is considered a modern classic.
Phil Connors, an arrogant and smarmy weatherman for local news, his new female producer Rita, and cameraman Larry go to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to film the Groundhog Day festival, an annual ritual which Phil loathes.
After being trapped in Punxsutawney by a blizzard, he wakes up the next morning to find it's still Groundhog Day. Everyone goes on
exactly like they did the previous day, with only him aware of it. Surprised, he goes through the motions, still gets stuck in Punxsutawney, and wakes up the next morning to find it's still Groundhog Day,
again.
A few times round the loop, and Phil starts to see the upside. He can do anything he wants, with no fear of the consequences because tommorrow will never come. He can manipulate the townsfolk with ease using what he learned about them in previous iterations and he can steal money with perfect knowledge of an opening to take a bag of money. Soon he is living a dream life, with wealth enough to buy everything Punxsutawney can offer and inside knowledge that lets him talk every girl in town into bed.
Every girl but one. Rita remains resistant to his charms. No matter what he tries, he cannot find the magic sequence of words that will win her. Even when he tells her everything she's told him she wants to hear, she still detects his insincerity, and rebuffs him. He learns French poetry for her and she still keeps him at arms length.
Frustrated by his failure and the endless, unchanging repetition of the day taking it's toll on him, Phil
falls into despair. First trying to kill the groundhog, when that fails, just himself. But nothing works, he wakes up the next morning in Groundhogs Day. Eventually, he talks to Rita, telling her about his predicament and asking what she'd do. Rita, for the first time detecting something sincere and likeable within Phil, convinces him to look at the cycle as an opportunity not just for self-indulgence, but for self-improvement.
Phil starts using the time to improve himself, and the town. He takes this day seriously because this is
his day. Over many repetitions he teaches himself numerous skills, such as piano-playing and ice sculpture, and puts right those things that went wrong on the original day. This culminates in a single perfect day, which is enough to win Rita.
The next day he wakes up to a brand new day, full of promise.
Groundhog Day provides examples of:
- A God Am I
Phil: "I said I'm like a god. I'm not the God... At least I don't think..."
- Anti Hero
- Bachelor Auction
- Butt Monkey - Both Larry and Phil, with each other.
- Cameo - by writer/director Harold Ramis, no less. He plays a doctor.
- The commentary reveals that this wasn't intentional. The extra they hired never showed, and somebody had to step into the big white coat.
- Plus Harold Ramis makes a very good doctor, since most people associate him with Dr. Egon Spengler
- Comedic Sociopathy
- Convenient Slow Dance: Although by that point, Phil is Genre Savvy enough to have deliberately arranged it.
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming - "When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."
- ..."You're a sucker for French poetry and rhinestones. You're very generous. You're kind to strangers and children, and when you stand in the snow you look like an angel." Say it with me now: Awwwww!
- Cursed With Awesome
- Deadpan Snarker - Phil, par excellence.
- Despair Event Horizon - Phil is eventually driven to the depths of suicidal despair by the endless repetition of February 2nd. Then, he's driven into even further depths of suicidal despair by the fact that suicide doesn't work. Interestingly, it's when he's at his lowest that he eventually hits on simply telling Rita the truth of what's happening to him... and things begin to improve from that point on.
- The Ditz - Mrs. Lancaster means well, but... she's not all there upstairs.
Phil: "Do you ever have déjà vu?"
Mrs. Lancaster: "Oh, I don't think so, but I could check with the kitchen."
- Epileptic Trees - One of the more outlandish theories is that Phil was trapped in Groundhog Day for several thousand years. (Although in an earlier, discarded draft of the script, he was.) The current theory was that it was closer to about 10 years.
- It's mentioned someplace (perhaps in the older draft of the script?) that he read the entire Punxsutawney library, every book in it, by reading them one page a day. Each book would take months, if not years, to read; and there would be thousands of them in the library.
- As a point of fact, Word Of God has it that the timeframe is intentionally ambiguous, but likely on the order of ten years
. (It also confirms that the original plan was for thousands - although they only used a bookshelf at the bed & breakfast, not a library - and the studio wanted two weeks.)
- This isn't that far out, actually - considering that he learns, from scratch, how to make ice sculptures with a chainsaw!
- Everything But The Girl - Closer to "Everything Before The Girl," but it counts.
- Eye Take - used to full effect by Bill Murray.
- Fridge Brilliance - It's essentially a solid hour and a half of character development. I mean you could say that Phil did a 180 just to ensure a Hollywood happy ending, but actually getting from point A to point B through the rambling inner monologue of the protagonist in a logical way without making anyone carry the Idiot Ball is something to appreciate. Especially if the finished version is funny.
- Foil - Ned Ryerson, provoking the same reactions from Phil that Phil causes in others.
- Groundhog Day Loop - Trope Namer.
- Heroic BSOD
- High Concept - Man is forced to relive one day over and over. A simple concept that allows for so many scenarios.
- Inherently Funny Word - Gobbler's Knob, site of the groundhog ceremony
- Instant Expert
Piano Teacher: And you've never played before?
Phil: Not before today.
- Subverted in that he's only an Instant Expert from the rest of the town's time frame, not Phil's own.
- Jerkass - Phil most obviously, Ned somewhat less intentionally. It's also made pretty clear that Larry's a bit of a jerk as well.
- Karma Houdini - At least initially; Phil exploits the time loop to do whatever he wants to whomever he wants whenever he wants and avoid the consequences, and ends up repeatedly robbing, seducing, attacking, cheating and manipulating the townsfolk seemingly without punishment. Over the course of the movie, however, it becomes pretty clear that the time loop is his punishment, not only for his actions in the movie but for his whole Jerkass nature before the day began. A deleted idea that the loop was the result of a curse from a jilted ex-lover underscores this point
- Kick The Dog - Phil towards the beginning of the movie.
- Don't forget Larry, too. At first, he just comes off as a guy who won't put up with Phil's crap, but the scene where he steals back his tip money is supposed to be an indicator that he's not a very nice fella (if you missed it, then his later comeuppance seems to come literally out of nowhere).
- Leisure Suit Larry - Larry the cameraman.
- Mental Time Travel
- Montage - Used effectively a couple of times.
- The Power Of Love - Only by winning Rita's heart does Phil break the time loop.
- Men Dont Cry - After Rita says that the perfect man for her wouldn't be afraid of crying, Phil responds with, "This is a man we're talking about, right?"
- Ring Ring CRUNCH - Phil does this to his clock radio that won't stop playing "I Got You Babe" a number of times.
- Save Scumming - An unusual non-video-game example of this trope.
- Seen It All Suicide - A rare, non-animated example when an extremely bored and depressed Phil kills himself multiple times. Then in a subsequent scene he lists each one to Rita as a shocked waitress looks on. Hilarity Ensues.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong - The many errands Phil runs as he spends longer and longer in the loop.
- Small Name Big Ego - Phil before the loop. He invariably responded to greetings with, "Hi, thanks for watching."
- Snow Means Love - Several times.
- Once, really. See, this is why I hate time travel.
- Tearjerker - As Phil learns the fragility (and preciousness) of life through his repeated and futile attempts to save a dying, homeless old man whom he was mean to in the first "years" of his stay on Groundhog Day.
- Also, Word Of God states that execs originally wanted this subplot dropped because it was too much of a downer for a comedy. The director insisted that it stay in, and rightly so, because it shows the egotistical Phil that he is not, in fact, "a god."
- Type Casting - Mostly Bill Murray, alternately played straight and inverted during the course of the movie, but a couple of the others could be described as such too.
- Viewers Are Goldfish - Subverted by this film and many others that use Groundhog Day Loop plot devices, as each repetition has variations.
- Viewers Are Morons - Phil believes most of his audience are ("People love blood sausage: people are morons").
- What Could Have Been - The original script featured the explanation for the unending loop and its escape clause, but they found by leaving it out made the film more magical.
- You Cant Fight Fate
Doctor: He's very old. It happens.
