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-