Andy Samberg | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Palm Springs

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Darren

On the surface, Palm Springs is instantly recognisable as a genre-savvy update of the classic Groundhog Day template for the twenty-first century.

The basic plot finds two young adults – Nyles and Sarah – trapped living the same day over and over and over again. There is no escape from this nightmare, which finds the pair constantly reliving the wedding of Sarah’s sister Tala. As befitting the more modern media-literate approach to these sorts of stories, Palm Springs joins Nyles at a point where he has already been trapped in the loop for an extraordinarily long amount of time. He is already as familiar with the rules and limitations of this sort of narrative as any audience member who watched Groundhog Day on loop.

Making a splash.

This level of self-awareness in a story is potentially dangerous, encouraging ironic detachment. It’s very each for stories about these sorts of genre-savvy protagonists to feel more like plot devices than actual characters, particularly when operating within constructs that audiences only recognise from other films. “It’s one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard of,” Nyles casually explains to Sarah early in the film. Sarah responds, aghast, “That I might have heard of?”

There are certainly moments when Palm Springs feels like it might be just a little too knowing and a little too arch, its own story too consciously framed in terms of familiar narrative devices. Most notably, even though the film is not directly named, one of the big emotional beats in Palm Springs seems to be lifted directly from Jurassic Park. Released the same year as Groundhog Day, it exists within the same nostalgic framework and was just as defining for an entire generation of movie-goers. Moments like that feel just a little bit too heavy-handed.

Some “him” time.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Andy Samberg, comedy, cristin milioti, eternal recurrence, film, Groundhog Day, love, millennial, Movie, non-review review, palm springs, review, romance, wedding | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: Celeste & Jesse Forever

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Darren

While it’s not quite as novel as the core idea might suggest, Celeste & Jesse Forever has a fascinating central concept. Most romances leave off after the initial courtship – the “and they lived happily ever after” all but printed at the bottom of the end credits. Celeste & Jesse Forever offers a somewhat skewered take on that. We begin at the end of a marriage, and follow the two central characters as they try to deal with living apart from one another. The movie isn’t as subversive as it could be, working hard to integrate conventional romantic formulas into this new framework, but it is something a bit different – and the concept carries it quite far. A winning central performance from Rashida Jones and a charming sense of humour help keep the movie interesting, even if it never quite commits fully.

Celeste & Jesse Forever is well worth a look, if only to demonstrate that there is room to tinker with the conventional formula for romantic comedies.