‘Palm Springs’ and the trouble with changing a proven formula

By Jake Skubish

Groundhog Day-style movies, much like the characters trapped in their infinite time loops, have been recycling the same story since the Bill Murray classic debuted 27 years ago. Sometimes the narrative is transposed onto the horror genre or dressed up with some Tom Cruise action, but the same basic plot structure remains: one person, stuck living the same day over and over again, until they learn something that allows them to escape this temporal trap.

There’s a reason for this recurrence: the story works. But that hasn’t stopped movies from toying with the formula, and Palm Springs, the Andy Samberg-starring vehicle that debuted on Hulu this past weekend, has added one of the most inventive changes yet: what if it wasn’t one person trapped in the time loop, but two? In theory the change sounds simple, but it alters where the plot line can go.

Palm Springs takes place at a wedding in California that Nyles (Samberg) would probably want nothing to do with even if he weren’t stuck there for eternity. His only connection to the bride and groom is through his girlfriend Misty (Meredith Hagner), a buoyant ditz who’s obviously a poor match for him. He resigns himself to a meaningless existence until Sarah (Cristin Milioti), a fellow misanthrope and sister to the bride, finds herself stuck in the time loop right alongside him.

The first 20 minutes of Palm Springs are absolutely thrilling, dropping us into the Groundhog Day concept in a way I’ve never seen and gleefully exploring the possibilities of its premise. When a single person is stuck in a time loop, nobody believes them: their journey is a solo one, and the lessons they learn are about what it means for an individual to live in the world. When two people are stuck together, the situation is the same but the conversations about it are different; they are able to engage with each other on the meaningfulness of life and push each other to confront the truths they’d rather avoid.

It’s a unique wrinkle, which is why it feels disappointing when Palm Springs eventually putters into convention. For all the ingenuity that comes with its premise, the film still ultimately tells the same story as every other time loop movie: characters becoming better people because the loop forces them to address their own shortcomings. This is not a bad thing; a story well told is a story well told. But in the process of trying to change the formula, Palm Springs gets bogged down in the mechanics of its convention.

The film makes the same critical mistake as many Groundhog Day ripoffs: it tries to explain why this is happening to Nyles and Sarah. The temptation to assign a reason to such an unbelievable phenomenon is obvious, but it’s rarely effective: the stakes of the movie are in the emotional rebirth of the trapped characters, not in their literal escape from the time loop. Palm Springs spends a lot of time on the mechanics, at the expense of the relationship between Nyles and Sarah; I found myself wishing a lot more of the movie had focused on their interplay. It also cheapens the emotional transformation. When you can figure out a way to escape the loop manually, you have less of a need to change yourself.

None of this means Palm Springs isn’t a good movie. I’d highly recommend it, mostly because the performances are so damn charming. Samberg and Milioti are great together, and Meredith Hagner stands out as Nyles’ girlfriend (I’d be happy to see Hagner get her own movie). It’s a breezy, fun viewing, and I was invested in the characters’ growth. Palm Springs is a welcome addition to the time loop genre.

If future films try to reapply the concept (and I truly hope they do; it’s always fun), I might suggest a substantive tweak rather than a structural one. Nyles is given some key advice late in the film, predicated on the idea that he should find what makes him happy; the context in which this advice is given suggests this idea is much more easily applied when you have a lot of money.

The subjects of time loop movies are almost universally white and well-to-do. How might the question of finding meaning in life change when you don’t have the same access to resources? The characters may be stuck living the same day over and over, but that doesn’t mean we need to be stuck watching the same characters over and over, too. Still, spending a couple hours with the immense talent of Samberg and Milioti is an absolute blast. It may be something we’ve seen before, but Palm Springs is still an enjoyable, thoughtful time at the movies.