Friday, March 8, 2002 | 9:21 a.m.
"Groundhog Day" is one of a kind. Other films before and since have explored the notion of a time warp, but few as intelligently as this 1993 comedy. And on DVD (Columbia Tristar Home Video, $24.95), the movie only gets smarter.
If you haven't seen the movie, you should now. It's a deceptively simple tale: Self-centered weatherman Phil Connors (one of Bill Murray's best roles) is forced to live a single day of his life -- Groundhog Day -- over and over again. He is trapped in Punxatawney, Pa., for all time, it seems, and only he realizes that the day is repeating. He retains his memory (and gradually loses it) from one day to the next.
Director Harold Ramis and writer Danny Rubin did something right from the beginning -- they never explained why. Phil doesn't know why either, and over time he stops wondering, as does the audience. He wants to know what you can do if you have no tomorrow, and the audience wants him to find out.
Ramis notes in the commentary track that Phil's experience was based on Elizabeth Kubler Ross' five stages of grief, and we watch Murray skate through them: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. At first he thinks it's not happening, and steamrolls everyone around him. ("He's as sincerely bad as he is sincerely good," Ramis chuckles.) Then he uses the information he gains over time to commit crimes and seduce women, particularly his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell). Later still, he tries to commit suicide. Oh, and it's a comedy, remember?
Murray has seldom been funnier. Whether stuffing his face with everything on the menu, consequence-free ("I don't even have to floss"), or playing chicken with a train ("I'm betting he's going to swerve first"), he never hits a false note. He plays Phil at such an even keel that it's easy to believe him when he turns philosophical: "Maybe God isn't omnipotent. Maybe he's just been around for so long that he knows everything."
Compared to the dozens of extras supplied on several recent discs, the single documentary and director's commentary track provided with "Groundhog Day" seem a bit spare, but they're worth the price of the disc. You learn, among other things, that the film was a tremendous hit with Buddhists and was the subject of an essay in a psychiatric journal. You are told how often Murray improvised (very often).
And you get to hear a director get in touch with his emotions, sort of. "I have tears in my eyes now," Ramis says dryly, during an emotional scene. "As I get older I cry at movies more often. I cried at 'X-Men.' "
All told, the DVD of "Groundhog Day" is archive-worthy, even if it doesn't feature an interview with its star. In a way, it doesn't need one. All you need to know about his performance is contained in the performance itself, and with DVD you can watch it over, and over, and over again.
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