Meewella | Critic

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Tag: Matthew Compton

QuickView: Palm Springs (2020)

“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

QuickView: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

“We’d like to get to the point where Connor is everywhere, like oxygen or gravity or clinical depression.”

Paula

Lonely Island’s take on the music mockumentary is really just a thin plot to string together the band’s signature style of lyrically ridiculous pop, and the songs are undoubtedly the highlights of the film. The scenes in between rely largely on the big names who agreed to provide cameos or talking heads, but the wow factor declines as the movie drags on. Spinal Tap remains the pinnacle of this style of filmmaking because what happens off-stage is so well-observed. Here, the by-the-numbers rise and fall, with band members falling out and reconciling, cannot quite sustain an entire movie. As with most pop stars: the key to enjoyment is just listening to the music and ignoring the rest of their antics.

6/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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