Why Groundhog Day was one of the last great Hollywood comedies.
02nd February 2009
Why do we still celebrate the movie Groundhog Day, 16 years after it was first released?
Den of Geek.com – Each February 2nd I perform a small ritual, and this one was no exception. I wake an hour earlier than usual, at 6am to be precise, and using my bedside clock radio I scan the radio airwaves. It doesn’t usually take long to find a station playing the 1965 hit I Got You, Babe by Sonny & Cher. That’s entirely appropriate, as it is Groundhog Day…
Such is the influence of what seems a relatively minor comedy film when it opened in 1993, the last in a chain of movies that had brought Billy Murray and Harold Ramis from Caddyshack, to Stripes and Ghostbusters (I & II) before this apparently low budget affair.
I’m sure reviewers at the time might have also pointed out that the theme of redemption is one that Murray himself explored five years earlier with Scrooged, and in this respect, audiences had already seen him being bad and then learning the error of his ways. Yet, there is something magical about this movie which gets right under the skin, in a way that Scrooged, for all its schmaltz and witty dialogue, can’t quite equal. Perhaps it’s the strength of the concept, or the deft execution, or the characters performances, but whatever happened on February 2nd, it’s stuck in our unconscious collective to be repeated endlessly.