Harold Ramis
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What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There are obvious Groundhog Day vibes here, but Palm Springs does a great job of balancing the romance with the existential and adding just the right amount of goofiness.
The other thing it does to freshen up the formula is to pull a second character into the loop, which ends up providing a new variable for Siara to play with, and it also helps solve maybe the biggest single problem with Groundhog Day : this functions properly as a romantic comedy.
The premise is a lot like “Groundhog Day.”
If you too are having a deja vu experience, it is because this screenplay is very similar to the movie Groundhog Day .
[SPOILER WARNING] The twist of a Groundhog Day-esque time loop is a welcome addition and played to a hilarious, never cheesy, effect.
That’s the fateful loop Nyles ( Andy Samberg ) finds himself stuck in in director Max Barbakow’s surreal Sundance sensation, a sort of sun-baked metaphysical rom-com and millennial Groundhog Day rolled into one.
Director Christopher Landon, now a revered alum at Blumhouse Productions for his Happy Death Day (2017) and Happy Death Day 2 U (2019) titles (he also cut his teeth on the tail end of the production company’s most profitable franchise in 2014’s Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones ) segues from reconstituting Groundhog Day (1993) to a horror film version of Freaky Friday ’s body switching antics for the succinctly titled Freaky .
A film that’s ultimately done in by overestimating its own sense of cleverness and creativity, it’s a lot like director and co-writer Christopher Landon’s most notable success, Happy Death Day, which mashed-up a Groundhog Day premise with a slasher movie.
Con Happy Death Day (2017), combinó el bucle de tiempo de Groundhog Day con el típico slasher movie , y hoy regresa con Freaky , otra divertidísima fusión de subgéneros que parte de la pregunta ¿qué pasaría si Friday the 13th tuviera un bebé con Freaky Friday ?
With all due respect, the Freaky Friday concept has been explored just about as much as Groundhog Day, so it was always going to take a clever angle to make this worthwhile.
And now we’re being treated to Christopher Landon’s Freaky , a mash-up horror flick along the lines of the director’s 2017 movie Happy Death Day , which took the temporal-loop concept of Groundhog Day and made it gruesome.
Edge of Tomorrow draws masterfully from exactly the right influences: there’s the obvious parallel to draw to Groundhog Day, but the most striking aesthetic reference point is James Cameron’s Aliens, from the exoskeletons down to the casting of Bill Paxton (Two Guns), who restrains himself from declaring “Game over!” even once.
There’s a pretty good chance that every review about “Edge of Tomorrow” will reference the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day” at least once, and that’s because both films feature a very similar plot device, not unlike the one that was also employed in Duncan Jones’ underseen sci-fi thriller, “Source Code.”
Time travel’s a problematic device as it can be the enemy of internal logic, but here, despite a modicum of head scratching when the exposition finally comes and an ending that gives you pause, it’s straightforward enough, liberating the film, in its own World War II parlance, to explore the themes it’s borrowed from Groundhog Day ; a flawed character who matures while stuck in his time loop, his changing feelings for a woman he gets to know over many iterations of the same day, the empowering notion that we’re each ultimately the masters of our own fate, regardless of how pernicious a lie that is.
Based on the manga All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and adapted for the screen by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (upcoming James Brown bio-pic Get On Up), Edge of Tomorrow recalls other notable time loop sagas, including Groundhog Day and Source Code in the witty and engaging way it moves its story forward piece by piece.
From the trailer alone it was clear this new film by director Doug Liman ( The Bourne Identity ) had borrowed heavily from 1993's outstanding live-die-repeat karmic comedy Groundhog Day .
Edge of Tomorrow borrows liberally from films such as Groundhog Day , Starship Troopers , and Independence Day , but that doesn’t stop it from emerging as a terrific entertainment all its own.
What emerges is a film that mixes elements of old fashioned mystery narratives with the concepts from Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day and Chris Marker’s La jetée, which was more directly the inspiration behind Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.
Directed by Duncan Jones , writer-director of the 2009 BAFTA award winning Moon, Source Code doesn’t shy away from its spiritual cousin Groundhog Day.
“Source Code” will bring back memories of such unusual inspirations as “Groundhog Day” and “24,” but it mostly feels to this critic like what a classic thriller director like Alfred Hitchcock would have done with an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
Among Source Code’s many pleasures—which include a swiftly-paced 90-minute runtime, welcome dashes of humor and general Alfred Hitchcock-meets-The Twilight Zone-meets Groundhog Day vibe—is the general refusal by Jones and screenwriter Ben Ripley to engage in any clunky exposition.
In this case, screenwriter Ben Ripley has filched from the best, delivering a taut, mostly well-crafted race against the clock that combines the time-loop conceit of “Groundhog Day” and the postwar paranoia of “The Manchurian Candidate.”
An almost risible collision of the bogus science and cranial confusion from Groundhog Day, Inception and Avatar, it also shares the themes of isolation and alienation found in Moon, director Duncan Jones’ heralded debut.
She's doomed to re-live the same day, Groundhog Day-style.
As a big fan of 1993’s Groundhog Day and more recently 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, I know how clever and fun these time loop films can be, and after seeing the trailer for Happy Death Day, the idea of mixing that particular storytelling convention with the horror/slasher genre had me all sorts of excited.
Now’s as good a time as any to admit that I never really liked 1993’s Groundhog Day all that much.
Applying the Groundhog Day premise to a horror movie is so obvious a conceit that I’m surprised it hasn’t been previously attempted.
Every time the sun goes down, she gets brutally murdered by a masked killer, only to return from the great beyond – Groundhog Day style – more desperate, anxious and exasperated.
Since 1993’s “Groundhog Day,” there have been a growing number of instances in TV and film of using the “one day on a loop” plot point.
For many years after the 1993 release of Groundhog Day , it seemed that even the shameless rapscallions who pitch scripts in Hollywood wouldn't dare copy that film's brilliant and unique central conceit.
Directed by Joe Carnahan, Boss Level proves once again that you can borrow the Groundhog Day idea and, like Edge of Tomorrow , Happy Death Day, and Palm Springs , still add something new to it.
The sci-fi Groundhog Day concept is all too familiar ( Edge of Tomorrow , Source Code ), and Carnahan employs a ham-fisted narration device that borders on incessant.
A high-octane riff on Groundhog Day that crisscrosses cyclical design with director Joe Carnahan’s avid addiction to high falls and fireballs, Boss Level doesn’t so much reinvent the timeless concept as much as it blends a few genres together to give it a point of difference.
That might make you concerned for the quality of Boss Level , yet while its long gestation has its odd quirks (Mel Gibson as the main villain, no thanks), Carnahan delivers on his " Groundhog Day as an action movie" concept.
If the best example of this idea is 1993’s “Groundhog Day,” “Boss Level” is several levels below that now heralded classic.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Directed by Tim Burton
influenced by Groundhog Day (1993)
Plot Themes
Overseas, Abe's past becomes clearer, part of a time-continuum ploy Riggs devised, like Groundhog Day rebooted to World War II.
It just can’t stop coming up with limitlessly peculiar stuff, much of which has a familiar odor: It’s “X-Men” meets “Alice in Wonderland” meets “Groundhog Day,” plus there’s a kind of Addams Family versus the Holocaust vibe — “They’re creepy, they’re spikey, they’re totally Third Reich-y.”
It's the same day, over and over again, "Groundhog Day" style.
Miss Peregrine has been able so far to preserve in an endless cycle, “Groundhog Day”-style, the day prior to the fatal bombing by creating “loops” in time.
The result is basically “Groundhog Day” meets The X-Men, with a touch of “American Horror Story” thrown in for good measure.
The peculiar children of the film's title are certainly unique but you can find plenty of other films in the DNA of "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," particularly skeleton soldiers from "Jason and the Argonauts," the X-Men franchise for making freaks lovable, "Groundhog Day" and even the underappreciated Hayden Christensen film "Jumper," which also has time shifting at its core and the same sort of evil force in Samuel L. Jackson.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
influenced by Groundhog Day (1993)
Plot
…a Groundhog Day/Edge of Tomorrow-style loop…
…until the stranger pulls the Groundhog Day trick of telling them everything he knows about them.
The film cleverly blends the reset mechanics of Groundhog Day with the fatalistic time-loop tension of 12 Monkeys…
…reminiscent of Groundhog Day…
Scenarist Matthew Robinson (“Dora and the Lost City of Gold”) also borrows elements of “Lost” and “Groundhog Day.”
…playing an exhausted and somewhat perturbed team leader caught in his own Groundhog Day time loop…
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)
Directed by Ian Samuels
influenced by Groundhog Day (1993)
Plot
This terrific teenage take on Groundhog Day , adapted by Lev Grossman from his own short story, makes no bones about its inspiration, namechecking the 1993 comedy classic from the outset.
While the film, like the recent “Palm Springs,” is, to an extent, a new version of “Groundhog Day,” its familiar premise plays out with snap and charm, thanks to fresh themes and appealing lead characters.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The obvious comparisons here are Groundhog Day and Palm Springs , but The Map of Tiny Perfect Things does have a little bit of its own flavor.
Another year, another “Groundhog Day” rip-off.
As I possess absolutely no knowledge of the short story, I saw The Map of Tiny Perfect Things presented as a fairly wholesome and optimistic YA romance which utilizes the same temporal anomaly trope used in films Groundhog Day (1993), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and Palm Springs (2020).
Time-loop movies continue to be all the rage, and while Groundhog Day (1993) remains the champ with Edge of Tomorrow (2014) holding onto second the rest of the field is wide open.
Thus, his latest comedy, “About Time,” which he wrote and directed, is a disappointment, not only because it keeps reminding you in spots of other films and plays that toyed with similar ideas — oh, let’s say “Groundhog Day” and “Back to the Future” or even the Thornton Wilder classic play “Our Town” — but also because the movie doesn’t measure up to Curtis’ own high standards.
If anything, it too closely recalls Harold Ramis' fantasy masterwork "Groundhog Day."
About Time seems to be locked in the same revolving pattern, repeating itself over and over but without the eccentric wit of Bill Murray’s recurring Groundhog Day—a movie which Stephen Sondheim once considered musicalizing (his new plan of action is now, instead, collaborating, with Ives on a similar time-sensitive storyline).
Initially, getting a girlfriend is the reason Tim hits rewind on his life and there are faint echoes of Groundhog Day as he experiments with ways to impress blonde bombshell Charlotte (Margot Robbie), then Mary, saving one of the bigger laughs for their first night together.
Sure, Bill Murray pulled similar stunts in Groundhog Day , but both the universe and Andie McDowell saw through his shit.
One could make the case, I suppose, that Bill Murray more or less did the same thing to Andie MacDowell in Groundhog Day, but it's worth pointing out that his efforts to woo her by turning back the clock ended in failure.
While its setups and theme of finding individuality might remind you of “The Truman Show,” “Pleasantville” and “Groundhog Day,” it plops them at the center of something fresh: video games.
Whether through a lack of originality or a desire to minimize the exposition in a movie whose elevated concept could’ve gotten unnecessarily complicated, the opening minutes of “Free Guy” borrow heavily from both “Deadpool” and “The Lego Movie,” as Reynolds wryly narrates the rules of his world: In “Free City,” the “sunglass people” are the heroes (represented here by a self-deprecating Channing Tatum), while everyone else are NPCs, blithely going about their “lives” in an endless, uninteresting loop (a “Groundhog Day” conceit that lifts still more DNA from other films, including last spring’s game-based action comedy “Boss Level”).
Competently combining elements of The Lego Movie, The Truman Show and Groundhog Day with a Grand Theft Auto-style open world video game, Free Guy is the latest filmic vehicle to rely heavily on the shtick of star Ryan Reynolds – who also acts as producer.
Whether it’s the Groundhog Day meets The Truman Show set up or a finale which is beat for beat reminiscent of the similarly derivative Ready Player One , it doesn’t try to break new ground.
While it pays homage to the likes of Groundhog Day and The Truman Show in inventive new ways, there are a few too many occasions it skips a beat and rushes into moving the story along (Guy gains sentience extremely quickly, arguably robbing Free Guy of the chance to make that and other moments land harder).
By cobbling together elements of The Truman Show, Ready Player One, Groundhog Day, and (especially) The Lego Movie, Free Guy employs a premise that’s in danger of becoming overused but has enough fun with the concept that the viewer can’t help but enjoy the ride (a least for a while).
Fans of the genre expect no less, and this movie name-drops “Groundhog Day,” “Looper” and of course Marty McFly.
Israelite and screenwriters Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan name-drop numerous time-travel staples throughout their movie, referencing everything from Rian Johnson’s Looper to Groundhog Day and Bill & Ted.
The smart and super-slick teen time-machine picture Project Almanac is the latest incarnation of this would-coulda-shoulda pipe-dream — a movie so knowing that its characters reference Looper, Groundhog Day, and maybe five other films that lay out the pros and cons of rewriting the past.
Quinn wants better grades, so he goes “Groundhog Day” on his chemistry exam.
It also is smart enough to reference its predecessors, such as "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," "The Terminator," "Timecop" and "Doctor Who." (At one point, one of the characters uses "Groundhog Day" as a verb.)
In addition to pulling tricks on those who have bullied them, the kids help their friend Quinn (Sam Lerner) pass a Chemistry test in an over-and-over sequence that is sour instead of funny, comparing poorly not only to Groundhog Day but to its recent copycat, Premature.
The Godfather (1972)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced Analyze This (1999)
Plot Characters
Harold Ramis's film is one of these latter vehicles that tartly leverages De Niro's "wise guy" shtick for some uproarious laughs, whether it's his Mr. V. (a New York City crime boss, ostensibly fashioned after John Gotti) making a thuggish retort to his shrink (Billy Crystal in his best role since City Slickers) after learning the Freudian definition of "Oedipal complex" -- "Freud was a sick fuck and so are you" -- or a delightfully cheesy dream sequence where the duo re-enact the infamous fruit-market hit scene from The Godfather.
From general characterizations to an amusing scene with a guy in a car trunk and a clever dream spoof of -- and insider joke regarding -- a scene from "The Godfather" (to which De Niro comments "I was Fredo?
The show is a pensive, droll, nuanced meditation of what it means to be an Italian functioning in an America where Italian is an eponym for pizza and "The Godfather."
One of Ben's dreams is a parody of the Marlon Brando shooting scene in "The Godfather" that goes on too long without much payoff; and a gangster meeting with other dons, at which Ben has to fill in for Paul, never really delivers the comic fireworks you're hoping for.
The movie surrounds them with fairly lively violence (the shrink himself ends up in a shark tank at one point), but a lot of the mob scenes are satires of "The Godfather'' and its clones.
In Analyze This, he doubly tests his comic mettle with a role that is not merely funny, but a parody of the blood-curdling Mafia hard guys he played in The Godfather and Goodfellas.
Once again, the union trumps the fragile concept, “borrowed” from 1993’s “Groundhog Day.”
What follows is a blatant rip-off from Groundhog Day as the smitten Roth is forced to woo his love afresh each day, at the same time winning over her suspicious fisherman father and steroid-crazy brother.
Groundhog Day dealt with similar themes and still managed to be hilarious.
The plot -- it's inspired and ridiculous at the same time -- is best described as "Groundhog Day" meets "Memento."
Directed by Peter Segal ("Anger Management") from a script by George Wing, it's a skewed cross between "Memento" and "Groundhog Day." Problem is: Adam Sandler's no Bill Murray.
Essentially Groundhog Day and Memento with the cast of The Wedding Singer, this is a sweet-natured romcom with some good gags and a lovely performance by Drew Barrymore.
"Ghost Town" plays a bit like a blend between the Bill Murray comedy "Groundhog Day" (1993) and the Patrick Swayze tear-jerker "Ghost" (1990).
In the third act, the movie all but announces it's going to copy "Groundhog Day," then does so.
Koepp’s Ghost Town, however, is more than simply a regurgitation; while it clearly pays homage to a variety of antecedents—everything from early classics like It’s a Wonderful Life and A Guy Named Joe to more recent favorites like Ghost and Groundhog Day—its view on human relationships is surprisingly direct, even edgy for a studio comedy.
Written by Gene Stupnitsky, Lee Eisenberg and director Harold Ramis, the movie’s obvious inspiration is Life of Brian, but it never manages to reach (or even approach) the manic heights of that Monty Python classic.
Ramis has said that he was inspired by such comedies as Monty Python’s Life of Brian but the movies that I kept thinking of while watching Year One were Mel Brooks’ late-career efforts like Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
Biblical times were milked for raunchy but riotous laughs in Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I and Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but the well seems to have run dry when it comes to Year One, a disastrous comedy that’s the cinematic equivalent of an old-fashioned flogging.
What he doesn't acknowledge is the film's debt to English comedy - specifically Monty Python's Life of Brian and perhaps a few Carry On farces.
“Year One” keeps the elements simple for Ramis, as writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky script a broad adventure wide open for celebrity cameos, knowing winks at biblical highlights, and constant one-liners -- along the lines of Mel Brooks’s “History of the World” or Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.”
To compare the inane "Year One" to a Monty Python comedy like "Life of Brian" is like saying a Natural History lecture is as thrilling as Raquel Welch in a pelt.
It’s a Groundhog Day-like existence, numbing and constricted, but Jarmusch makes it seem as if Paterson is his very own garden of Eden.
The film follows Paterson for seven days, and it’s almost like a crazy-mirror version of “Groundhog Day” in which every morning is a pleasure, an act of quiet satisfaction to get up at the same time, go to the same job, jot poems in the same notebook, make small talk with the same people, and go home to the same beloved wife to see what new interior design project or dubious recipe she will have embarked on today.
Imagine a version of “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray’s prickly frustration replaced by Driver’s soulful reserve, and you’re halfway there.
I’m not the first to notice this film’s formal resemblance to Groundhog Day (Variety’s Justin Chang got there first ).
I think Jarmusch has actually remade “Groundhog Day” as a work of spiritual ecstasy.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Directed by Jonathan Dayton
influenced by National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
Plot
Sunshine embraces the well-paved comedy road-trip structure with more than one rip-off, er, homage to the classic National Lampoon's Vacation.
Little Miss Sunshine brings to mind one of those National Lampoon's Vacation movies, except this time the family is much more realistic and the tone much darker.
There's even a lengthy sequence that's stolen from "National Lampoon's Vacation" and doesn't fit in this movie at all.
But here we have Little Miss Sunshine, which might aptly be described as "dysfunctional family hits the road," or in other words: National Lampoon's Vacation meets The Squid and the Whale .
I had to miss Sundance this year, so I'm just catching up with Sunshine, which one of its few Sundance naysayers described to me as National Lampoon's Vacation for people who think they're too smart for National Lampoon's Vacation.
Think too much about it, and you’ll realize that in its outline, it’s not exactly full of nothing we haven’t seen before (in fact, it’s kinda an indie-flavored spin on National Lampoon’s Vacation!).
“You’re not a god,” Steven is mocked by Andie MacDowell’s Rita on TV in Groundhog Day, one of the visual punchlines giggling from the mise en scène.
For much of the first hour, Lanthimos and co-writer Efthymis Filippou keep us speculating on what’s going on between them, especially when we see Steven nestling down for a cosy night’s viewing of Groundhog Day with Martin’s mother (a very droll cameo from Alicia Silverstone).
Partway into The Killing of a Sacred Deer , someone mirthlessly watches a scene from Groundhog Day , that classic comedy about being trapped in a cycle of endless repetition.
Can it be an accident that when the good doctor sits down to watch Groundhog Day with Martin and his mother (Alicia Silverstone), in some sort of twisted matchmaking scheme, all we hear is Andie MacDowell telling Bill Murray that he’s no god?
Martin also invites the doctor to his own, not-so-great home, getting him interested in a movie on TV, “Groundhog Day” chosen specifically by Martin, and going to bed early so that his widowed mother (Alicia Silverstone) can flirt with Steven.
He invites Steven over to his house for dinner with his mother (Alicia Silverstone) and to watch his favorite movie, Groundhog Day.
Harold Ramis certainly didn’t invent it, but his Groundhog Day made the narrative loop device a mainstream mainstay, lovingly aped in everything from Source Code to Edge of Tomorrow to 50 First Dates.
It might seem that Before I Fall is simply Groundhog Day for the High School set, but that’s giving it far too much credit.
While it sounds a lot like Groundhog Day meets Mean Girls, Before I Fall follows more in the footsteps of other recent destiny-obsessed young-adult novels-turned-movies such as If I Stay and Beautiful Creatures .
The story of a popular high school senior (Zoey Deutch, from Dirty Grandpa ) caught in a time loop that forces her to relive a crucial day in her life over and over, this neatly written Heathers- meets- Groundhog Day high-concept package delivers both technical polish and a toothsome yet likeable cast.
Like “Groundhog Day” for audiences too young to get the reference, “Before I Fall” suggests that the decisions we make really matter, though it’s not at all clear about why Sam Kingston (“Vampire Academy” star Zoey Deutch) is caught in an infinite loop, or what she needs to do to break it.
Slowly, though, this story of a popular high school senior who finds herself trapped in a Groundhog Day-like time loop begins to establish a more profound emotional plangency and thematic weight.