This is a perfect example of why I love reading your blog! Keep it up Jeff!
CLICK
Then put your little hand in mine,
There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb…
Babe…
I got you babe…
I got you babe…
Ha, this is still a comedy in my book. You can’t possibly take this movie too seriously. Its to be enjoyed as a comedy. Especially since the main characters don’t die in the end (happy ending) - its a comedy even on technical terms. Plus there’s no way someone would relive Ground Hog’s day over and over again… Except me perhaps, because I’ve been watching this movie at least once a day since June 2010, on my Android, while I work (along with a couple other 80’s flicks).
Interesting blog post, nonetheless…
Nitpicking:
… keep repeating this ad infinitum until you arrive …
“Ad infinitum” (“to infinity, forever, without limit”) and “until” don’t mix well. You could go with “ad libitum” or just drop it altogether: “keep repeating this until you arrive”.
Wow! I just happened to (re-)stumble across this site while cleaning up old inactive URLs. Apparently I had bookmarked it a long time ago and just forgotten about it. I have always liked “Groundhog Day”, so I read the entire post and all 72 comments. I really enjoyed the post and discussion, but the reason I said “Wow!”, is because I couldn’t believe that in all that, it seems that NOBODY grasped (or at least no one mentioned) the whole POINT of the movie! So I felt compelled to register and make this comment.
There is obviously some “god” or “force” or “karma” or whatever you want to attribute it to, that is forcing Phil to repeat the same day UNTIL he learns a particular “lesson”. The reason the day stops repeating has NOTHING to do with “getting the girl”. The day ONLY stops repeating because he buys the homeless guy a hot meal and therefore prevents him from dying! (Or perhaps that was just intended to be the final step in his transformation into a “caring person”. Remember he was DAILY catching the boy falling out of the tree, as well as other “good deeds”.)
In order for “Groundhog Day” to be the “feel good” movie that I believe it was intended to be, you have to perceive “getting the girl” as a REWARD for becoming a caring person.
In a (probably vain) attempt to keep this “on topic”, I suppose you could say that the GOAL of his A/B testing was to “get the girl”, and becoming a caring person was simply an unintended (but fortuitous) side-effect.
I see your point from a broader perspective.
Whenever we optimize to gain maximum revenues or some kind of quantifiable outcome, we lose something inside us.
This is the insight I get after reading this article.
And for that I feel that this article is fucking brilliant.