The romantic comedy Andy Samberg – Cristin Milioti may be a tribute to Groundhog day, but it is the character of JK Simmons who is the true successor to Phil Connors.
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Medium credit stingers aren’t made for the streaming-only era – it’s too easy to skip to the next title in the queue and skip a hidden moment after a movie seems to be over. Yes Palm springs had hit theaters, the scene appearing about 15 seconds after everything went black, would have been inevitable for anyone who hadn’t immediately rushed to the bathroom. But theaters have been closed for months, and on home viewing, the sequence is easy to miss. Press stop once the name of the director Max Barbakow appears, and you will leave the movie thinking that Nyles (Andy Samberg) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti) found their way out of the circle of time they had been trapped in while leaving Roy (JK Simmons) stranded in perpetuity. What would be a kind of cock movement for a couple of endearing lovers!
The epilogue makes it clear that Sarah sent her research to Roy before she and Nyles emerged from their time trap, and that their “pretty crazy theory” really works. Roy, back in her three-piece suit and Panama, tracks Nyles down at the wedding they’ve attended an infinite number of times, only to find that Nyles has no idea who she is anymore. This version of Nyles has been rebooted along with everyone else, and she’s getting through the day for what is, for her, the first and only time. She never met Roy, never partied with her, was never periodically persecuted and tortured by her. Nor did he show Roy the mysterious desert cave that got them into this mess in the first place. Is this a paradox? Are there multiple universes involved in this delightful romantic comedy? These are questions that I cannot answer, I have not yet completed my doctorate in high concept film physics. The stunned smile that spreads on Roy’s face when he realizes what this means implies that he will soon be making his own bomb-enabled outing from the endless 9th of November.
Or, you know, maybe it won’t. Groundhog day, the movie that Palm springs He has his most obvious debt, it is about a character who is reliving on February 2 over and over again until he makes peace with his situation (and with himself). “No matter what happens tomorrow, or for the rest of my life, now I’m happy because I love you,” Phil Connors (Bill Murray) tells Rita (Andie MacDowell) on the last night before he is released to move on. . Nyles’ climactic speech to Sarah in front of the cave echoes that: “I hope that exploiting us works. But it’s really irrelevant to me while I’m with you. And if it kills us, well, then I’d rather die with you than live in this world without you. And yet what Nyles is going through is nothing like what Phil is doing emotionally. Nyles has already achieved a kind of nihilistic enlightenment, nothing important by the time the movie begins, content to move on forever.
His progress is about learning to relate to other people again, notably Sarah, with whom he declares himself ready to build a life, just before the space-time continuum detonates around him. Their Roy whose mostly off-screen journey parallels Phil in that he learns to appreciate the beauty of the moment, to give up his dissatisfaction, and to accept and love what he already has. When Nyles first tells the story of how Roy ended up in the cycle of time, Roy is a lonely assistant who searches for drugs and mutters about how marriage is a bottomless pit of pain that makes you forget who you are. Roy Punxsutawney is a tract house in Irvine that he shares with a woman he never planned to marry and with two children he felt trapped with. She is a resentful figure who declares that the night she spent beating up a stranger is the best thing in her life. But when Nyles looks at him again, after an unknown period of eternity in the cycle of time, Roy has changed. He is happily marinated tuna steaks for the grill, and sitting content on his patio watching his twins play.
Palm springs is a movie about marriage and how part of what it means to settle down with someone is to overcome the fear that every day is the same. For Nyles, November 9 is a bubble to hide, and for Sarah, it’s a trap that he has to fight to get out of, and when the two finally seem to successfully kick off the date, they go back to lounging by the pool. for that house that does not belong to them, because the point is not that they have to do something new, but could. But for Roy, the place where he had previously felt trapped becomes a piece of suburban paradise, not because his situation has changed, but because. Maybe leaving is irrelevant. When Phil finally wakes up on February 3 and goes out to greet the new winter morning in the city he’s been trapped in for decades, the first thing he says is “Let’s live here!”
And then he adds: “We will rent to start.” There is nothing wrong with keeping some options open, after all.
