Rich in Love. - movie reviews

National Review, April 12, 1993 by John Simon

I AM for method in madness, a touch of reason in rhyme, and a bit of logic even in fantasy. If the hero of Metamorphosis wakes up as a beetle, let him be a beetle for all concerned. And sure enough, the mailman does not perceive him as a kangaroo; the family does not farm him out as an ox at plowing time. The picture of Dorian Gray does not turn into a self-portrait by Rembrandt setting a record at Sotheby's. There are rules, limitS, even to fantasy.

The new movie Groundhog Day, for all its incidental pleasures, is a cheat. Its hero, Phil Connors, a jaded, arrogant, insufferable cad of a Pittsburgh TV weatherman, is sent out, as on every February 2, to cover Groundhog Day at Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and report on the prognostication of his colleague and namesake, Phil the groundhog. Bored stiff and insulting everyone at the bed-and-breakfast where he is billeted (his woman producer and his cameraman, on a flimsy pretext, stay at a hotel), he gets up grouchy at 6 A.M. and sulkily narrates as the other Phil faces his shadow. And indeed, winter resumes as a huge blizzard forces him, the attractive Rita, and the nerdy Larry to spend another night in the snowed-in burg.

But when Phil (the grinch, not the groundhog) wakes up, it is Groundhog Day all over again. And the next day, and the next; he seems hog-tied into an eternity of Groundhog Days. But there is a catch: he can live the day any way he wants to. He can seduce any town belle by trial and error, or commit any kind of suicide out of sheer exasperation: he will awake under the same flowered quilt, to the same silly song and inane radio chitchat, punctually at 6 A.M., to report the same shadow play. But although he may behave better or worse, the townsfolk, though they react appropriately to his changes, go on living their own unchanged lives, convening in the town square for the groundhog ceremony, then proceeding with their admittedly uneventful existences.

This is where the rules are broken. It's fine for wretched Phil to be punished by a spell of repetition, but why would all others have to groundlessly groundhog it up, without even being, like Phil, aware of it? Why should their guiltless lives be implicated in his comeuppance? And if they do not change in any other way, why would they change in respect to Phil? The attrition grinds down his haughtiness, he becomes involved with others; he changes a flat tire for helpless old ladies, he runs to catch a young boy falling from a tree. Yet Punxsutawney, unlike Brigadoon, is not under an enchantment: it participates in Phil's fantasy without sharing in it.

Phil discovers that Rita, the producer, is really a charmer. Having used his privileged position--learning daily from his nightly mistakes--to seduce the local sexpot, Nancy, he switches his attentions to the demurely desirable Rita, and tries to conquer her by fair or ever-so-slightly foul means. Yet why should poor Rita be forced to relive this miserable day just to give Phil a chance to evolve from crafty Casanova into selfless swain? Though snooty Phil may not be missed back in the real world, why should Rita and Larry, the cameraman, be trapped in the same nightmare? Why should Rita be educating Phil? Compared to this, Back to the Future, which also cheated, was as pure as this movie's artificial snow.

If you can accept the inconsistent (much harder than the improbable), the rest is mildly pleasant going. Bill Murray knows how to make the initial Phil deplorable without being disgusting, and both the increased self-indulgence in his furious early repeat performances, and the gradual redemption through love for Rita, are skillfully managed. The body of the film is the rehabilitation of Phil, as Rita's recurring slaps in his face slowly dissolve into reciprocated feelings. And here the character of Rita, too, falls prey to self-contradiction. Rita, now thoroughly answering Phil's passion, nevertheless refuses to spend Groundhog Night with him even on his umpteenth try. Very well: perhaps Rita, improbably for a sophisticated TV producer who majored in nineteenth-century French poetry (!), wants to remain a virgin till marriage. Yet at film's end, as a reward for his by now enormous goodness, Phil is astounded to find her in bed with him as another Groundhog Day dawns--or the first non-groundhog dawn breaks.

But the pusillanimous filmmakers-- Danny Rubin, the writer, and Harold Ramis, the co-writer and director-- have another twist up their tricky sleeves. Phil, it emerges, was too tired to possess Rita (monumental goodness can be exhausting), as she, rather regretfully, remarks to her now fully redeemed bed partner. This sexual shell game, these moral tergiversations, attest to the film's queasily exploitative values. In the end, all is contrivance, to maintain an anodyne PG rating. Groundhog Day makes a pig of itself, and it's no use saying, "But it's only a fantasy." Tell that to Franz Kafka.

Still, for folks who can enjoy ice hockey played with soccer goals, there is something here. Andie MacDowell is an endearing Rita, though rather overshadowed by the luscious Marita Geraghty as Nancy--and the minor roles are all well taken. The movie is nicely shot by John Bailey, agreeably scored by George Fenton, and atmospherically designed and directed. But where the fantasy goes overboard is when Murray (and he a Canadian, too!) utters some unspeakable gibberish and Andie rhapsodizes, "You speak French!" On the whole, Hollywood should stay away from culture (references to Baudelaire and that most prestigious composer of soundtrack music, Rachmaninov); but Groundhog Day is clearly unafraid of turning into groundhogwash.