Bill Murray wakes up in the same day forever and somehow teaches you everything you need to know about being a better person by Sunday night.
- Groundhog Day was released in 1993, directed by Harold Ramis and starring Bill Murray
- The film has been praised by Buddhists, psychologists and philosophers for three decades
- Roger Ebert called it one of the most thoughtful films ever made about self-improvement
- It gets funnier and deeper every single time you watch it, which is genuinely rare
Groundhog Day 1993 is the film that gets better every time you watch it, which is either a very neat trick for a movie about being trapped reliving the same day forever, or the universe being funny about something. Phil Connors, a cynical, self-important Pittsburgh weatherman played by Bill Murray at his most brilliantly insufferable, travels to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the annual Groundhog Day ceremony and wakes up the next morning to discover he is doing it all again. And again. And again. For what the film implies, without ever stating, might be years or possibly decades. It is a comedy. It is also one of the most quietly profound films about personal transformation ever made. And it is absolutely the right thing to watch on a Sunday night when Monday is sitting in the corner of the room looking smug.
Groundhog Day combines comedy with profound insights about personal growth and is perfect for when you are feeling stuck or need motivation. Its third act is much sweeter than it needs to be, and that shift toward a romantic and deeply human turning point is part of what makes it such a great feel-good pick that has become not just a classic but an entirely influential film. Harold Ramis, who directed and co-wrote the film with Danny Rubin, described it as a movie about a man who becomes a good person because it is the only thing left to do. That framing is so clean and so right that it is almost annoying.
The first time you watch Groundhog Day, you watch it as a comedy. Bill Murray doing increasingly unhinged things with his immortality, robbing an armoured car, taking piano lessons, becoming the most knowledgeable person in Punxsutawney, eating entire cakes at a diner table, is one of the greatest extended comic performances in the history of mainstream Hollywood film. The laughs are real, they are plentiful, and they do not require any deeper reading to land.
The second time you watch it, you start noticing what the film is actually doing. Groundhog Day can be read as a recovery film, a self-improvement manual, and a philosophical treatise simultaneously, because Phil Connors repeats the same patterns until he becomes willing to change. His transformation from self-centredness to service mirrors profound themes of surrender, growth, humility and daily practice. Buddhists have written about it. Psychologists cite it in therapeutic contexts. There is a Talmudic scholar who published a paper arguing it is the finest cinematic exploration of Jewish ethical philosophy. The fact that Harold Ramis almost certainly did not set out to make a film that would satisfy Buddhists, therapists and Talmudic scholars simultaneously is part of what makes it extraordinary.
Bill Murray dominates every single theme and joke and provides laughs in every corner of the film. It is one of those films where you truly never stop laughing. But the reason you never stop feeling it, even on your fourth or fifth watch, is Andie MacDowell as Rita, the producer Phil falls genuinely in love with, and the quietly devastating way the film shows him learning that love is not a problem to be solved or a person to be manipulated into compliance. It is something you have to become worthy of. That lesson, delivered inside what markets itself as a broad comedy, is the whole film.
Here is the case for watching Groundhog Day specifically tonight, on a Sunday, before Monday arrives. Phil Connors spends an unknowable stretch of time treating each day as meaningless because it will simply repeat. He is miserable. He wastes the time spectacularly. Then, gradually, he starts filling it differently. He learns piano until he plays beautifully. He learns to ice sculpt. He memorises the lives of the people around him so he can show up for them in exactly the right moment. He becomes, through pure repetition and the decision to use his time better, genuinely extraordinary.
Monday will arrive regardless. The day will happen whether you are ready for it or not. The question Groundhog Day asks, with more wit and warmth than any motivational content you will find anywhere on the internet, is what you decide to do with the time you have been given.
Put it on tonight. You will sleep better and you will wake up ready!
Director: Harold Ramis
Starring: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, Stephen Tobolowsky
Year: 1993
Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes
Streaming: Available on Netflix UAE and Apple TV
