Have You Watched “Palm Springs”? (My Thoughts)

Earlier this year, I heard about a time loop romantic comedy film starring and produced by Andy Samberg (SNL, Brooklyn Nine-Nine). I was immediately sold, and I marked the date on my calendar to get Hulu.

Megan and I watched Palm Springs this past weekend, and it’s quite possibly my favorite movie of 2020 so far (yes, theaters shut down months ago, but we’ve still watched plenty of movies!). It is as advertised–a time loop rom com–but it also goes a bit deeper and offers some elements I haven’t seen in this type of movie.

I’m not going to spoil anything, but if you’re already sold on the concept, go sign up for Hulu (the first month is free) and check out Palm Springs. I highly recommend it. Oh, and it’s probably not for kids.

If you watch it, let me know your thoughts in the comments!

***vague mention below of my favorite concept in the movie***

Palm Springs poses a question I haven’t really considered while watching other time-loop movies like Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, Russian Doll, and Source Code: What if you actually like the day you’re stuck in? Yes, the whole “living forever” thing could get old, but imagine all the different things you could do if tomorrow never comes. The repetition could actually be a good thing: You will eventually know where to be and where not to be throughout the day, but whenever you want to step outside of what you know, it’s super easy to do that in the modern world. There’s a near infinite number of things you could do in a single day.

2 thoughts on “Have You Watched “Palm Springs”? (My Thoughts)”

  1. I enjoyed the film. Enjoyed it so much I immediately texted my three favorite people and told them to watch it soon. Honestly surprised it took this long for someone to do a different riff on Groundhog’s Day.

    I really liked that it hinted that he had been looping for an enormous amount of time. I read something once where Harold Ramis said the original plan was for Bill Murray to have been trapped for thousands of years, though they ended up with it just being a few years to a decade.

    I think they threw just enough gobbledy-science into it to eliminate ‘magic’ and I think the twist about Milioti’s character was fantastic, and I 100% empathized with her perspective.

    And I would never leave. Well, I imagine I eventually would decide to skip out (were it an option) after centuries. Not a huge fan of my own mortality, (in my 40’s) and I think a lot of people feel like they’ve ‘had enough time’ only after they’ve had to live with a body that is well past its prime. If you could freeze yourself in a state where you could do just about anything you want, I doubt living would lose its appeal for a very, very long time. Imagine everything you could do with current technology. Read nearly every book, watch nearly every film, go anywhere you could reach in less than a day…it would be amazing.

    While I would certainly be disappointed that I wouldn’t see my kid grow up, he would also never (from my perspective) grow old and die.

    Not to get fatalistic, but once we’re gone, we’re gone. The vast majority of human beings die and are only remembered by a generation or two until there’s no one left that actually knew them. Not to mention the eventual heat-death of the universe, which sort of demands that we be selfish and focus on our own happiness and not contemplate the ultimate futility of effort and existence. So re-living the same day forever works just fine for me.

    I am sure that after a few centuries, I might finally get bored and decide to get back into my own time stream, but could you imagine everything you would then be able to accomplish if you had studied everything possible and become a subject-matter expert in numerous fields? You could change the world, and at least your legacy would last a while.

    Reply
    • I’m glad you liked it too! I also liked how long he’d been stuck in the loop (so long that he couldn’t remember his pre-loop job).

      Reply

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