Harold Ramis makes a repeating day sustain a funny, unsettling comedy, with Bill Murray’s sourness doing much of the work. The romance is a little too obliging, but this is worth anyone’s evening.
Groundhog Day is a superb comedy about an unpleasant man who cannot get through a day and be done with it. Harold Ramis gives the idea room to become funny, troubling and tender without treating it as an excuse for a lecture. Phil Connors, the weatherman played by Bill Murray, cannot get past the day he is living. The film is interested in what he might do with that situation, and how long his customary contempt can remain entertaining even to him.
Murray is crucial because he makes Phil’s contempt so easy to enjoy. His deadpan reactions to the repeated day made us laugh, then feel oddly lonely; being stuck with this man begins to look wearing for Phil as well. The sourness never seems like a performance put on for the audience’s approval, though Murray knows exactly how amusing it can be. He lets us see the exhaustion in it without suddenly asking us to forget the unpleasantness. That makes the quieter passages feel consistent with the jokes.
Danny Rubin and Ramis’s screenplay gives Phil room to test the possibilities of his predicament. It keeps asking what he will try, and what difference another attempt might make. Ramis wisely avoids explaining the mechanics at length, leaving the behaviour to hold our attention. Pembroke J. Herring’s editing makes the recurring situations easy to recognise while keeping our attention on what has changed. At 101 minutes, it seldom lets familiarity slow the comedy.
John Bailey’s cinematography gives the small-town surroundings an ordinary, unforced appearance, a sensible choice for a fantasy that depends on familiar things becoming oppressive. David Nichols’s production design helps the place feel lived in, without making its inhabitants’ lives look absurd merely because Phil disdains them. Both serve the comedy without competing with Murray for attention. George Fenton’s music is less restrained about encouraging tenderness, and occasionally we would prefer to hear less of it. The actors are usually doing enough already.
Stephen Tobolowsky’s Ned Ryerson supplies a welcome comic challenge to Murray: Phil’s exasperation becomes funnier when another performer is allowed to be just as insistent. Andie MacDowell brings warmth to Rita Hanson, and the film benefits from having someone who does not seem to share Phil’s enjoyment of his own cleverness. The romance is the weaker business. Rubin and Ramis arrange too much of her part around his improvement, leaving MacDowell less to work with. She keeps Rita likeable without entirely solving that problem.
A romantic comedy about an objectionable man becoming more considerate can be a fairly smug proposition. What distinguishes this one is how much amusement Ramis is willing to find in the objectionable part, and how patiently Murray lets us tire of it. The sweetness costs the film some bite, but it does not make the earlier laughter feel dishonest. We would recommend it to almost anyone; a taste for fantasy is not required, though a tolerance for other people’s bad moods may help.
