Groundhog Day/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** When Rita is with him at midnight, he points out that he's only reset at 6 AM.

* Why does Phil become trapped in a [[Groundhog Day Loop]] scenario in the first place, and why does it end when it does?

*** In the second draft, it was a curse from an [http://www.cracked.com/article_19138_7-hotly-debated-movie-questions-that-totally-have-answers.html ex-girlfriend] (page 2).

** My father always said it was because he was a jerk...and that he couldn't get out until he started to believe in God. Proof for this theory: he's already STOPPED being a jerk for a while before he actually gets out (he's shown having a schedule for saving people, and has gone through med school to save the old man...). Also, when the old man dies for the final time, he looks up to heaven... I don't know if it's true or not, but it would fit the God references earlier on in the movie.

*** I always figured about 5-10 years. I mean, once you account for all the "repeat" days (days where he basically did the same things as others), that sounds about right.

*** ''I'' always figured he was stuck in the time loop for... you know, six weeks. Because of the whole "six more weeks of Winter" thing.

*** If you count the number of days you actually see represented in the film, there are exactly 42, which aligns with the forecasted "six more weeks of winter". This might imply that Phil's curse had a set expiration date all along, and that personal growth had nothing to do with it. But who knows?

*** This troper is here to tell you that accumulating that quantity of piano proficiency in that period of time is IMPOSSIBLE. Not just hard, not even "you would have to be Franz Liszt" hard, but rather it simply can't be done. You can't build that much muscle memory so fast, let alone do it while spending as much time as he does doing all that other stuff. It has to be longer.

**** He doesn't say that he picked it up while stuck in the time loop; it's something that he learned over a "normal" six months of his life. I personally believe he was only caught in the cycle for the number of days shown plus the minimum number of days needed to account for everything he references doing off camera (so probably two months total); if he was doing this any longer then that, there's no way he would have been in such good spirits towards the end. The [[Word of God]] stated below doesn't count anyway, since they didn't use the idea in production.

***** From what I saw, it's pretty much outright stated that he learnt it during the time loop; the exact words are:

'''Phil''': Now you know. }}

***** I'm surprised he didn't lose count. Since any kind of record would be reset by 6 AM, he'd have to ''remember'' for how many days he had been practising. For six months.

** Yeah, which is why he stops doing it, and only gets the girl -- and gets his freedom -- when he *stops trying* to romance her and she genuinely falls in love with the man he's become.

** When Phil does this in the movie with the other ladies he seduces, it's depicted as being sleazy and unethical. Furthermore, Rita saw through his every attempt to try and seduce her this way anyway, even if she doesn't actually know ''how'' he came by this knowledge (she simply accuses him of calling her friends and prying).

* The amount of time between the events early in the day seems fuzzy. For most of the movie, no matter how quickly or slowly Phil moves (most notably on the third day), he always runs into "pork chop" at the top of the stairs, Ned always spots him at the same place, Rita always asks "where have you been?" and he's always just in time for the groundhog to come out. But on the last day, he shows up early while Larry and Rita are setting up, ''and he's brought coffee and pastries''. And we find out later that he's bought insurance from Ned. Where did the extra time come from? It's not like he can wake up earlier. Maybe he found a shortcut at some point and maybe he went looking for Ned later, but it's a stretch.

** Not really. He'd literally memorized every single detail of the day. By avoiding the unnecessary conversations and moving fairly quickly he could have done everything portrayed in that day fairly quickly. The point is he knows exactly what would happen in most conversations and he's had a lot of practice.

*** Actually, most likely he doesn't need to rob a bank truck for the lessons. In one loop Phil gave the homeless man a wad of cash, an event that happen early in the morning before he had time to rob the truck. Besides, there may be a chance that the banks are still open and that he got the money from the account. Groundhog day isn't exactly a federal holiday.

** The bribing thing, to be fair, occurs when he's still in that jerk-to-nice guy transitional phase -- and furthermore, we only see him resort to bribery that one time. It's quite possible that once he's figured out the little girl and piano teacher's schedules and found some way to work it in to everything else he has to do that day, he could theoretically make sure to turn up for a piano lesson at a point where the teacher is free and the little girl's at school or something. And, as noted above, getting one music lesson abruptly cut off is unlikely to be a life-scarring event, and she probably didn't 'suffer' that much; even in the timelines where Phil did bribe the teacher to kick the girl out, she probably got over her disappointment fairly quickly.

 

* Wouldn't he go insane if he spent 10,000 identical days (over 27 years) desperately trying to get out? Has anyone read ''The Jaunt'' by [[Stephen King]]?

 

* Did Needle-nose Ned really know Phil or did he just do research on a minor celebrity to sell him insurance?