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Groundhog Day the Overanalysis

Some snippets of analytical rambling about bits of Groundhog Day the musical:

I never really, properly got “There Will Be Sun” until I actually sat in the theater watching it on stage. I understood what it was about, on the object level, but it wasn’t really obvious why it was there, why Tim Minchin really wanted to open with this relatively uninteresting ensemble chorus rather than getting straight to the far more punchy, eccentric and memorable “Small Town, U.S.A.” and properly introducing our leading man.

When you’re actually watching it in the theater, though, it’s different. It’s beautiful. It’s atmospheric as hell. It introduces us to these people, in a kind of solidarity with them, before we zoom in on Phil’s self-centered, condescending worldview for the rest of Act I, establishing an understated little thread of but these people aren’t really just annoying props in Phil’s day before that thread gets thoroughly pulled on in Act II, and it’s exactly right. In some part it’s the blue lighting and everyone’s colorful winter gear, creating a genuine cold winter atmosphere even in a warm theater, but I also think simply the presence of these people is a huge part of it. Listening to a recording is a whole different experience than actually being in a room with people singing. Group singing is a social activity, and it’s a strange kind of bonding experience just sharing this moment with the residents of Punxsutawney as they sing a hymn to the end of winter. In Iceland we have bonfires on New Year’s Eve, where people get together and gather around the fire and sing old folk songs in the snow; that’s what it felt like. The actual Groundhog Day celebrations as we see them later feel pretty goofy, particularly as we see them filtered through Phil’s perception, but while we listened to “There Will Be Sun”, I felt like I really got why they all want to celebrate this ridiculous holiday and why it means something to them. It’s a little local tradition that brings them together to sing and dream of spring, and that’s beautiful.

Connecting more with the people of Punxsutawney was possibly one of the biggest things about seeing it on stage on the whole. In the audio, they’re just occasional voices popping up here and there, but seeing these same people just being present throughout the story - celebrating Groundhog Day, sitting at the diner, on the ride during “If I Had My Time Again” - really adds a lot, one way or another. I cared about everyone who was dancing during “Seeing You”. Wilbur and Jeff are barely even characters but it was still the sweetest thing in the world to see them get together in the background. There was something so viscerally satisfying and happy about the end that I didn’t even care about Nancy not getting more of an explicit resolution, which was something I kind of wanted. She’s there, and she’s fine, and she’s seeing… Larry, but that’s fine! He seems like a nice non-douche! She will probably be okay! Everything seems like it will be okay.

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Even more important, though: Phil is significantly more visibly neurotic and not okay on stage than you can tell from the audio alone. Needless to say, I was delighted. “I’m sure there was a pack of Xanax in this jacket” sounds like a throwaway line that might just be him making a joke, but no, he actually has a bottle of Xanax and takes one, and throughout day two in particular he’s popping pills like his life depends on it. I especially like this in the context of the movie; the movie’s Phil Connors is just a sour, grumpy dude, but in the musical he’s clearly consciously, canonically suffering from depression/anxiety from the start, and that casts a lot of his behaviour and arc in a different, even more interesting light. Act I Phil isn’t just a dick; he’s poorly coping with serious mental problems (by being a dick), and that’s clearly the actual intended canon and not simply cool headcanon.

(It lends an additional punch to “Hope”, too. He doesn’t go from zero to suicidal merely because he’s trapped in a time loop; he was already in a bad place, and when the temporary high of ‘I can do whatever I want’ wears off and he’s still trapped and there’s nothing he can do about it, it just makes sense that’s where he ends up.)

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In “Day Two”, Phil lists out possible explanations for why the exact same day as yesterday seems to be happening again today:

Okay
One, I’m still sleeping and this, I’m just dreaming it
Two, it’s a prank, and everyone’s in on it
Three, it’s a flashback from when I was twenty and ate magic mushrooms and thought I was Aquaman
Four, it’s some kind of reality show about forecasters, bad bed-and-breakfasts and snow
Five, I’ve had a stroke and lost my memory of the year since last Groundhog Day

Then, in “Stuck”, he does it again as the healers babble on:

Fuck, okay
One, I’m still sleeping and this, I’m just dreaming it
Two, it’s a prank, and everyone’s in on it
Three, it’s a flashback from when I was twenty and ate magic mushrooms and thought I was Aquaman
Four, it’s some kind of reality show
Five, it’s amnesia
Six, it’s a stroke

This is almost the same list, but not quite: in the original, the fifth item is stroke-induced amnesia, but here he has amnesia as the fifth item and adds a sixth for the stroke. I really enjoy the fact it’s not exactly the same. Tim could have written it to be the actual same list (just changing it to something like “Five, it’s amnesia and I’ve had a stroke” would have kept the changed rhythm without changing the actual content of the list), but he didn’t, and I think that’s because for Phil it’s been several days at this point and normal humans generally don’t say the exact same thing twice. Everyone else in the loop says the exact same lines that they have on the previous days unless Phil’s influenced the course of their day differently somehow, but he is still dynamic and changing and he can’t perfectly recall exactly how the list went previously - he knows it was something about losing his memory and strokes, but this time around it becomes two items. I genuinely think this is very intentional on Tim Minchin's part.

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“Philandering”’s background lyrics are simply bits of the Punxsutawney song, set to funkier music:

Who is that
Emerging from his burrow?
Who can see
Is it a beaver?

Punxsutawney
Pennsylvania, USA
And there is no town greater
Than Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day
There is no town greater than Punxsutawney

Punxsutawney
It’s a little town with a heart as big as any town
There is no town greater than Punxsutawney on Groundhog

Phillip of Punxsutawney, aaaaaaahhh

Originally these lyrics are talking about Phil the groundhog and the Groundhog Day celebrations, but they’re not anymore; this is all about Phil the human weatherman. He’s emerging from his burrow into freedom; he can see everything. He is the all-knowing Phillip of Punxsutawney: he is a god, Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day is his dominion, and there is no town greater (for the moment). Thanks to the time loop, Phil has become an actual supernatural prophet in addition to being a mundane weatherman.

Other bits where Tim Minchin plays with the parallel between Phil the groundhog and Phil the weatherman include: the chorus of “Phil! Phil! Phil! Phil!” both at the groundhog ceremony and to Phil at the end of “Punxsutawney Rock”; and the recurring line “Do you think Phil will see his shadow?” from the radio broadcast, which obviously literally refers to the groundhog seeing his actual shadow but can also be taken to ask if Phil the weatherman is finally going to recognize his own shadow today: his narcissism, his contempt for others, his general jerkassitude, all the things he must shed to break free of the time loop. You could call this reaching, but it’s so perfect.

(Also, “This is your wake-up call.”)

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In “Everything About You”, Phil lists off random facts about Rita and her life that only some kind of weird stalker would know - this makes his point, but it’s also noteworthy that this is what he at that stage considers to be “everything about her”. In “Everything About You (Reprise)”, he gives a different list: her literary interests, what she looks like when she smiles, her toes being numb. In other words, the sorts of things that actual people know and care about when it comes to the people they love. It stops being about him knowing her life story and becomes about her being another human being that he actually cares about.

The original film’s equivalent is a fairly touching scene, but the differences are interesting. In the movie, Phil says that something changed in him the moment he saw her first, making it into a love at first sight kind of thing, which feels a bit weird - he sure didn’t change enough when he first saw her to actually treat her with a modicum of human respect instead of obsessively, creepily trying to get in her pants through time-travel trickery. The viewer’s impression until this point is pretty much that he didn’t actually come to love her in any real, human way until this iteration, and the musical actually firmly goes with that interpretation and ditches the love-at-first-sight angle completely.

In the movie, Phil also sort of puts her on a pedestal, saying she’s the kindest, sweetest person he’s ever met and he doesn’t deserve someone like her. It was sweet, even though it was a bit clumsily all tell and no show - him realizing he admires that in particular about her was a pretty good character development point, I think. But the same idea is kind of there in “And I know that you think I am shallow, but if you knew how deep my shallowness goes you’d be shocked” - he’s realized how shallow he is and is actually ashamed of it, largely because he knows she would find it shameful. Judging from many of the other changes made in the musical, I definitely suspect they specifically wanted to try to avoid the pedestalization, and I think this is a pretty good way to do so - “Everything About You (Reprise)” is still very sweet, but with a different focus, centering on that human connection and him noting some of the normal things about her that people would note about people they’ve gotten to know normally instead of seeing her as this magical perfect human being.

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I think my personal take on exactly why Phil broke out of the loop when he did is that Phil’s character development was largely driven by his admiration of Rita, the realization that he’s been a shallow asshole using his infinite time to just meaninglessly dick around when she has all these plans and dreams and desire to help people and make friends - that he doesn’t deserve her, as he said in the movie’s equivalent of “Everything About You (Reprise)”. So when Rita actually falls for him, he realizes that unexpectedly he has become someone she could love, after everything he’s learned. Breaking the loop required him not just to become a better person, start to see others as people and do good while accepting the things he can’t change, but also to be able to reflect on that and understand how he’s changed. “Seeing You” is that first time he properly reflects on his journey and where he’s come and realizes he’s actually happy and content with himself now (I’m here, and I’m fine), and Rita makes it happen. It’s not about him getting the girl, but it’s still triggered by her falling for him, indirectly.

Page last modified April 1 2025 at 00:33 UTC

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