February 2nd all over again creates perhaps one of the greatest comedies ever written and executed on screen. This original masterpiece usually gets its play on TV every year and each time I catch it I can’t bring myself to change the channel or even just put in my own copy. That is the built-in joke about the typical shelf-life of repeated experiences. It’s always intelligent and hilarious, and it sometimes gets irresistibly romantic or delightfully dark and cynical. It’s remarkable how the film balances such different moods without ever taking a wrong turn, Bill Murray’s finest comedy to date in this writer’s opinion.
Ned, I would love to stay here and talk with you… but I’m not going to. – Phil
Synopsis: Bill Murray plays Phil, a TV weatherman working for a local station in Pennsylvania; he is bitter, appallingly self-centered, and treats his co-workers with contempt, especially his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliot). On February 2, 1992, Phil, Rita, and Larry are sent on an assignment that Phil especially loathes: the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, PA, he wakes up the next morning with the strangest sense of doing it all before: he seems to be living the same day over again. The next morning it happens again, and then again. Soon, no matter what he does, he’s stuck in February 2, 1992.
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Director: Harold Ramis
Writer: Danny Rubin
Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell
Domestic Total Gross: $70,906,973
Favorite Scene: (not below) Phil can’t take it anymore, so he uses a different method to off himself each day for no one knows how long. It’s during these scenes that you really begin to wonder what it would be like to live the same day every day, not very fun me thinks.
Tags: Groundhog Day, retro review, review
