Best of Kottke: Groundhog Day Liveblog

It’s Groundhog Day — again. Once a year, our nation turns its eyes to an offbeat existential romantic comedy that thoroughly outperforms its sharpie-on-an-index-card premise, thanks to a brilliant collection of character actors, a thoroughly memorizable script, and the then-underrated, now-maybe-a-smidge-overrated acting talents of Bill Murray.

Four years ago, Jason hosted a 20th anniversary Groundhog Day liveblog with three of his regular guest editors: me, Sarah Pavis, and Aaron Cohen. It was a lot of fun. (I talked too much.)

Some of the questions we considered:

• Is Groundhog Day a time-travel movie?
• If you were recasting it, who would you pick?
• Does Phil’s behavior mid-movie predict creepy pick-up-artist culture?
• Does the time loop stop because Rita falls in love with Phil, or because Phil finally manages to live one day sincerely?
• Wouldn’t it be better to predict the weather by doing the opposite of what the groundhog indicates?

The answer to that last question is almost definitely yes.

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• Groundhog Day
• movies