‘Palm Springs’ is a thoughtful, funny ride through a time loop

Posted on July 17, 2020

By MARK VIOLA

“Groundhog Day,” the 1993 comedy starring Bill Murray as a man reliving the same day over and over again, is one of my all-time favorite movies. Beyond the execution and the wonderful performance from Murray, I just love the concept behind the story.

Since then, the idea has been used plenty of times in a variety of genres, so much so you could almost call them a genre upon themselves (although more accurately it’s a story trope). Recent examples include “Edge of Tomorrow,” “Before I Fall” and “Happy Death Day.”

Now we can add the Hulu original film “Palm Springs” to the list. The movie follows Nyles (Andy Samberg, “Saturday Night Live”) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti, “How I Met Your Mother”) as two guests attending a wedding in Palm Springs. However, a chance encounter results in them waking up to start the same day over again. And again.

I mentioned in my preview last week that I was not aware of a film using this particular trope involving two people, and that definitely puts a new spin on the events. For both Nyles and Sarah, this is not actually the best day to relive (due to reasons I won’t spoiler here).

What I will say is by the time we meet them, Nyles has already been going through the loop an undetermined number of times, while it’s a new experience for Sarah. Getting to see this unfold from two widely different perspectives, we can see how they can affect people long and short-term. The screenplay is from Andy Sirara, who is making his feature screen-writing debut. It’s clear he knows the usual beats in stories like these, and also knows that we know them as well. Although the story does sometimes subvert our expectations, it also uses those same beats to its advantage.

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