Fantastic watch, will watch again, and do recommend. Bill Murray carries this time-shift-loop adventure in hilarious form. The writing is excellent with a "redeemable protagonist" trope mixed in. The movie is creative with it's divergent time lines and even manages to maintain proper story arcs as Phil continues to loop. The supporting cast is wonderful in each of their roles, and manage to do repeat acting excellently. This was a popularizing (if not a birth) to a genre, everyone should have watched this movie at some point.

_**Going ’round and ’round the mountain with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell**_ A curmudgeonly weather reporter from Pittsburgh (Bill Murray) has to report on the Groundhog Day festivities at Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, for the fifth year in a row. He soon finds himself in some kind of strange time warp. Andie MacDowell plays a new producer for the network who joins him on the trek, along with Chris Elliott as the cameraman. “Groundhog Day” (1993) is a dramedy/fantasy with some romance about a person who has lost the joy of living and become a cranky, arrogant jerk. Is he too far gone to change? The movie’s equal parts amusing and profound. The theme revolves around getting stuck in a rut in life and desperately trying to find the way OUT. Meanwhile the woodchuck is cute. Beyond MacDowell on the female front, Marita Geraghty plays a potential date for Murray’s character; you might remember her from the Seinfeld episode “The Big Salad” as Margaret. But it’s the stunning Sandy Maschmeyer as his ‘French Maid’ date at the theater that steals the show in a brief scene. The film runs 1 hour, 41 minutes, and was shot in Woodstock, Illinois, which is just northwest of Chicago, and points nearby: Algonquin (opening scene), Rockford (quarry), Waukegan and Cary (interiors). Some stuff was done in the backlot of Universal Studios, along with establishing shots of Pittsburgh. GRADE: B-

“Phil” (Bill Murray) is one of those local television personalities who has delusions of grandeur. He thinks himself way more significant than he is as he is frequently acknowledged by the little man who thinks he’s wonderful as he huffs and he puffs the storms away on screen. For the fourth year in succession, he is to do a quick link from a small town that delights in consulting a ground-hog every year for signs of spring. This year, it suggests six more weeks of winter but that is just the start of of the problems for our cynical forecaster as he, his producer “Rita” (Andi McDowell) and cameraman “Larry” (Chris Elliott) find that a snow-induced accident is preventing them getting home. What’s one more night in his B&B, eh? Except, he awakens next morning and is immediately hit by an unnerving déjà-vu! He meets the same people and witnesses the same ceremony. What is going on? His team think he’s just under a bit of stress - but by day eight of this repetitive scenario he is beginning to lose the plot. Now if you were given the same day over and over again, what might you do? Turn to drink? Try to better yourself? Do some daft stuff that you know couldn’t hurt you for long? Help some folk? Fall in love? Well it’s safe to say that “Phil” ends up having a go at many of these options - but which, if any, will break this spell and set him free? There isn’t an whole load of jeopardy with the story arc, here, but it’s the escapades of the fractious, the frustrated then the more stoic “Phil” that entertains and Murray is at his best. Scathing and pompous becomes something altogether unexpected as his predicament takes it’s toll and opens his mind and his eyes. McDowell does just about enough though she doesn’t really add so very much but Elliott makes more of his smaller part as the team boffin in whom “Phil” has precisely zero interest. It also takes quite an humorous swipe at many things suburban. The community of the cheery and the well-meaning, the cheesy and the pathetic. These traits are all exposed to some of the spotlight here as our disgruntled visitor has plenty of time to explore more fully a town that we can all recognise, appreciate and ridicule. It’s not really laugh out loud, no, and at times the punchlines are telegraphed on ahead a bit, but it holds together well and has a certain “A Christmas Carol” sentiment to it. If you like your humour sophisticated, then look elsewhere. If not, then this is good fun.