“Today, tomorrow, yesterday — it’s all the same.”
Nyles
Palm Springs is the another addition to the recently expanding genre of time loop movies that owe a debt to Groundhog Day but, where many are merely derivative of the 1993 progenitor, Palm Springs succeeds in finding its own voice. Its greatest strength is a risk, trusting the audience’s intelligence by starting in medias res but doing so covertly — we swiftly discover that protagonist Nyles has already experienced this day many times before and the our knowledge is more closely aligned with Sarah (Cristina Milioti will be most recognisable from How I Met Your Mother) who is drawn into the loop. Palm Springs assumes cultural knowledge of Groundhog Day to allow exploration of the moral implications which emerged in its critical dissection over the subsequent decades. As disillusioned wedding guests, Milioti and Samberg are charming even in their characters’ more chaotic moments and they have plenty of chemistry, whilst a sense of mystery is introduced through the intermittent appearance of a homicidal J.K. Simmons. What makes Palm Springs such a delight is the variety on offer as it explores the multifarious psychological edges of this familiar fantastic circumstance, by turns nihilistic and joyous, calm and unhinged.
8/10
