Palm Springs

Somewhere along the line, the magical-realism premise of Harold Ramis’s beloved 1993 comedy Groundhog Day became a genre unto itself. The idea of a character stuck in a time loop, reliving a single day over and over again, and the iconic film that popularized it, are so specific they seem like things that could never be repeated without the results feeling woefully derivative. But Groundhog Day was not the first film to utilize this very specific conceit—Yasutaka Tsutsui’s serialized novel The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1964) was made into a movie in 1983—and not every film released post-Groundhog Day that employs the premise has been a lame rehash—Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (2014) uses the endlessly repeating day concept to create a compelling sci-fi action thriller, and Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day (2017) applies it to the slasher film with mildly satisfying dark-comedic results. But surely no other rom-com could be made without drawing unfavorable comparisons to the iconic Groundhog Day, right?

That question is answered by the largely successful Palm Springs, directed by Max Barbakow, written by Andy Siara, and produced by The Lonely Island trio of Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone—known for their SNL digital shorts, music albums, and the broad comedy features Hot Rod (2007) and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016). In the beginning, Palm Springs seems like little more than a contemporary version of Groundhog Day—instead of using the ‘80s/’90s comedy blueprint of a flawed middle-aged male who becomes a better man after undergoing an extraordinary experience, it follows the millennial comedy blueprint of a lazy thirty-something man-child who learns to take some small modicum of responsibility after coming in contact with a female character who challenges him to grow up just a little bit. Palm Springs delivers on that assumption, but Siara and Barakow craft an enjoyable and noteworthy film that both acknowledges the similar pictures that came before it while making several key structural and conceptual changes that raise it above mere imitation.

Andy Samberg plays Nyles, a guy stuck in a time loop reliving a day in which he accompanies his girlfriend to the wedding of her friend. Cristin Milioti plays Sarah, the maid-of-honor and sister of the bride who is clearly not happy at the wedding. I won’t give away the details of what makes Palm Springs unique in the canon of infinitely-repeating-day pictures. Suffice to say the main difference between it and so many movies like it (Edge of Tomorrow being a key exception) is that the main female character is as developed and integral to the narrative as the male.  Milioti (The Wolf of Wall Street, Sleepwalk with Me, Season 2 of the Fargo TV series) creates a wonderfully funny and emotionally relatable character—far more distinctive than Andie MacDowell’s Rita in Groundhog Day. One of the positive trends in more recent rom-coms is that they’ve gotten back to the old Hollywood idea that both characters in a romantic comedy should have dimension and be equally invested in the narrative.

Unfortunately, less welcome tendencies of contemporary comedies are also present in Palm Springs. The movie feels at some points lazily underdeveloped and at other times like it’s working too hard to be edgy or dark or smarter than its central conceit. Not everything fits perfectly together within the film’s internal narrative logic—we’re not twenty minutes in before we start questioning the reality of the opening scene; a key subplot featuring J. K. Simmons isn’t fully worked out; and not all of the emotional beats feel earned. Unlike Groundhog Day, which created small but indelible roles for its wonderful cast of character actors, the supporting actors in Palm Springs, like Peter Gallagher, Jacqueline Obradors, Dale Dickey, Jena Friedman, and June Squibb, are given almost nothing to do.

Still, by the end of the ninety minutes, the chemistry between Samberg and Milioti won me over. I appreciated how the film devoted just the right amount of screen time to the how and why of the time loop phenomenon. The setting—both the visually striking Palm Springs locations and the emotionally pregnant day-and-night-of-a-wedding backdrop—also enhances the story in splendid and perceptive ways. Palm Springs may not be a film for the ages, but it’s solid, even thought-provoking entertainment.