Punxsutawney Springs
**Spoilers contained within**
If the time travel film is the best sci-fi, the time loop flick is the second best sci-fi. And at the top are Back to the Future/12 Monkeys and Groundhog Day, serving as the eternal toasts of the subgenre. But when you’re playing in the realm of flux capacitors and space-time continua (Latin IV flashback!), can we even say for sure that anything will stand the test of time?
Enter Palm Springs, AFI alumni Max Barbakow and Andy Siara’s debut feature and Sundance darling, which released Friday July 10, on Hulu. Shot in a few weeks on a modest $5 million, the film stars slacker hero Nyles (Andy Samberg) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti), two millennials in not so piping hot Palm Springs, California for a late Fall wedding. Sarah is the reluctant maid of honor for her seemingly more lucky in love sister, and Nyles came with bridesmaid Misty (Meredith Hagner).
Yes, came with, but not exactly together.
The film’s initial scenes play out like the typical rom-com setup, including pre-wedding jitters, botched wedding speeches, and the revelry that follows. Nyles and Sarah connect over drinks and decide to take their own afterparty into the desert boonies. Just as they’re about to hook up on a romantic crag, though, a crazed Deathstroke wannabe Roy (J.K. Simmons) literally starts hunting Nyles, who retreats to a glowing cave. Sarah follows him in despite his warnings and so begins that familiar November wedding day. Again.
Like Groundhog Day, Palm Springs smartly marks the beginning of each not so new day with a familiar wake up regimen. Only, instead of Sonny and Cher’s 6AM wakeup call in a middling Pennsylvania hotel, we’re back in the beds of Nyles and Sarah, who aren’t even sharing a room together but rather, with other sexual partners. “It’s one of those infinite time-loop situations you might have heard about,” Nyles casually tells Sarah, a great line, which shows that the filmmakers trust a 2020 audience enough to speak in ironic shorthand.
But if audiences already know how this story goes, how can Palm Springs chart out a new path?
Well, one clever twist is having more than one character in this time loop. Nyles is old hat here, having attended this same desert wedding for days and months and maybe even longer. He’s been in there long enough that he no longer remembers what he does for a living — but then again he’s a slacker. As for Sarah, when she first goes into that cave, the following morning is her first deja vu. In this way, we have our seasoned vet in Nyles, confidently and casually explaining all the rules to newbie time looper Sarah, who asks all the questions the audience is also asking.
Unlike the singularly snarky and stuck TV weatherman Phil Connors, with Nyles and Sarah, we also get the privilege of multiple perspectives on this existential conundrum and how to break the pattern. In a couple of early fun scenes, Sarah tries on various ways to kill herself, including driving into oncoming traffic, with an amused Nyles idly sitting shotgun. This contrast is great and speaks to the individuality of these two characters — time loop or not.
Respecting a contemporary audience, many of these premise high jinks are fast-tracked to the first and early second acts. But while these moments sometimes help Palm Springs remain engaging, there are other times where the fun and games stagnates. Groundhog Day was much more gradual with the highs and lows of being stuck in temporal limbo, resulting in a more layered exploration.
However, when Palm Springs leads with its rom-com aspects, the film starts to pick up steam, especially when the two engage in creative date ideas like our own current quarantine reality; they get tattoos, fly planes, and, ya know, defuse wedding cake bombs.
The film is helped along by Matthew Compton’s 80s-influenced score, with some tracks seeming to channel Tangerine Dream’s electronic masterpiece Risky Business theme. The music slowly fades in as if it’s been playing prior to any audience having heard it, and will continue to loop happily long after we’re gone.
In this second half, Palm Springs hits with more surprises than you’d think, especially when Sarah disappears for a pretty decent amount of screentime right after the two start really hitting it off. Part of it is that Nyles, a time looping vet, has already resigned himself to this life and now in Sarah, thinks he has all that he would ever need. But Sarah knows that this paradise (or nightmare) isn’t real and wants to get out.
When she finally resurfaces, we discover she’s been brain dumping string theory at the local diner with the help of edX, one of the more memorable montages of the entire year. But when Nyles hits her with a declaration of love, Sarah can only roll her eyes. He’s still thinking two dimensionally, on rom com terms, whereas Sarah is focused on the science she learned that’s going to get them out of here. There are several Nyles speeches in the second half of the film that Sarah just cuts off, making this rom com flick also rather anti-rom com in many parts. This is where Palm Springs’ true originality lies.
There’s also a subplot with Roy, that third Palm Springs wedding visitor who got stuck in the loop before Sarah but after Nyles on the heels of a psychedelic misadventure. Part of Nyles’ journey here is sussing out what has meaning and what doesn’t, and also standing up for himself against Roy the assassin. In a standout scene, Nyles goes to Orange County to finally confront Roy and is surprised to find an unassuming family man, who gives our hero some worldly advice: “Find your Irvine. We all have an Irvine…This was always a good day here.”
Much like The O.C., Palm Springs also plays with the broader Southern California geography and mythology beyond L.A. And of course, this wouldn’t be a SoCal film without a traffic joke, and so Roy kills Nyles one final time just to expedite his trip back to the desert.
Oh, and no clue what to make of those dinosaurs Nyles and Sarah come across, except that it’s not a groundhog, but probably has just as much ability to predict an early Spring.
*** outta *****