GROUNDHOG DAY [the best, most intelligent and deeply layered films of the last decade]

National Review online ^ | January, 2005 | Jonah Goldberg

[Roscoe Karns]

GROUNDHOG DAY [Jonah Goldberg]

I watched it again last night. I may have seen it more times than Bill Murray repeated GHD. It got me thinking. I think it may be one of the best, most intelligent and deeply layered films of the last decade. I won't go out on the rhetorical limb the way Jonathan Last did when he said Buffy the Vampire Slayer "is the best show in the history of television." But I do think there is so much more going in Groundhog Day than most people realize. There's theology, metaphysics, psychology and most of it is remarkably understated and remarkably funny. No one ever mentions anything like Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return, or even explains why Murray comes so close to bedding Andie McDowell and then fails over and over again because he can't fake his sincerity. The use of irony in the second snowman scene is brilliant. And, let's face facts, there are few funnier lines in the history of cinema than (I'm quoting from memory): "This is one of those times where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather."

Anyway, just one layman's opinion.

[battlegearboat]

...and the young lady playing the receptionist is Betty Macik (aka: Betty Macey) formerly of Angleton, Texas and the former girlfriend of Randy Quaid (She played his wife in "Bound For Glory" with David Carradine.)

Betty owned a Mynah (sp?) bird with a good vocabulary and it loved to eat strawberries.

Funny you were there, did you happen to meet or know Betty?

[Ichneumon]

Funny you were there, did you happen to meet or know Betty?

Sorry if I gave the wrong impression -- I wasn't part of the cast or crew. I was working in that office building at the time, and when I came down to head home at the end of the day around 7pm, I found the film crew all over the plaza, setting up the scene. So I stuck around to watch.