Director Max Barbakow mines some of the more nihilistic implications of the perennial 90s classic Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993) for bittersweet laughs in this time-looping romantic comedy starring Lonely Island’s Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti of How I Met Your Mother fame.
Waking up in Palm Springs on the day of her half-sister’s wedding, Milioti’s Sarah keeps herself at arm’s length from proceedings as her smiling family and friends celebrate what should surely be a joyous day. Sarah, we come to learn, is the black sheep of the family, whose troubles with alcohol and mental health are written off as self-indulgence by her mostly indifferent step-mother and father. Sarah, although being maid of honour, is depicted as a wallflower, uncomfortable and anxious in what is perhaps the most emotionally intense of all social occasions.
Enter Samberg’s Nyles.
A charismatic but goofy layabout who seems to be taking the wedding as seriously as he would a frat house BBQ – complete with Hawaiian shirt and a seemingly everlasting supply of beer – Nyles entices Sarah with his captivating charm and eerie ability to be able to predict the movements and conversations of other wedding guests. Taken in by his confidence, Sarah joins Nyles in the desert for what she assumes will be a forgettable one-night stand, only to be accidently caught in the time-looping nightmare Nyles himself has been already experiencing for some time.
‘It’s one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about’
Replaying some of the central tropes and conceits of Groundhog Day, whilst offering a more contemporary and perhaps more meditative commentary upon the strengths and weaknesses of living only in and for the present, Palm Springs is a comedic blast, pure and simple. Like its spiritual predecessor, the fun of Palm Springs comes from its videogame-like aesthetic of its core conceit -being able to replay the same events over and over again with a sense of experimentation and creativity that allows its actors as well as the film’s director to produce laugh-out-loud visuals and skits without major narrative repercussions.
But for all its surface level flair, Palm Springs is truly predicated upon the comedic talents of Samberg, Milioti and J. K. Simmons (Spider-man, Whiplash), as well as writer Andy Siara’s ability to confidently balance the central absurdity of the film’s time-bending conceit – ‘It’s one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about’ – with a sincerity of thought and social-commentary that almost continually hits the mark.
Notes from the Multiplex 