Groundhog Day Review

The screenplay is the achievement, and its most disciplined choice is refusing to explain anything. No curse, no mechanism, no scientist with a theory, just a man waking up to the same radio broadcast, which forces the film to be about behaviour rather than plot. The progression is beautifully staged, from exploitation to despair to the suicides played as escalating punchlines to the slow accumulation of skills, and Ramis trusts the audience to notice the piano and the ice sculpture without being told how long any of it took.

Bill Murray is doing the hardest thing in his career, keeping the contempt legible while gradually draining it away, so the eventual decency reads as earned rather than as a conversion. Andie MacDowell is the film's limitation, a character defined mostly by what Phil wants from her. The Punxsutawney of the movie is a set of comic props that pay off again and again. It is a broad studio comedy that turns out to contain a real argument about how a life gets improved, and it is funny the whole way through.