A Movie for All Time

This is the film Bill Murray tried to make years earlier when he re-made W. Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge." The book dealt more with reincarnation, the 1946 film had the better cast and production, and Bill Murray's 1984 version dealt more with the horror and terror of war, but ultimately seemed to miss the redemption that the Murray character, Larry Darrell, was seeking. This film failed to give the viewer the satisfaction present in the earlier film version and in the book.

"Groundhog Day" finds the means to the redemption Bill Murray had been seeking in the earlier film and was led into after innumerable mistrial days in this one. There is satisfaction for the viewer in this.

My only question is how and why was Andie MacDowell cast in this film. She added six more weeks of winter to the film by her presence in it. She did the same destruction to "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

PC platitudes, tripe toasts for "world peace' through her great-northern-bean-like teeth were in no way endearing or an enhancement to this otherwise great film. ♘

A Movie for All Time - National Review Online

by Jonah Goldberg

OK, campers, rise and shine! It’s become a Groundhog’s Day tradition around here to run this cover story from the February 14, 2005, issue of National Review over and over and over . .

...In a wonderful essay for the Christian magazine Touchstone, theology professor Michael P. Foley wrote that Groundhog Day is “a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim’s Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos.” Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment, has cited Groundhog Day more than once as one of the few cultural achievements of recent times that will be remembered centuries from now. He was quoted in The New Yorker declaring, “It is a brilliant moral fable offering an Aristotelian view of the world.”...