Welcome to watch Mojo is the verdict.

The Siri's, where we tackle the biggest debates in pop culture and put them to rest today, will be deciding once and for all.

Is Groundhog Day a time travel movie?

That's right, Chuck, Chuck.

It's ground it up.

How can you know the future?

It's one of those infinite time lip situations you might heard about that I might have heard about.

Yeah, remember, like any high profile court case, there are strong arguments to be made on both sides.

If you disagree with our verdict, be sure to state your case in the comments below, Let's dive in.

Oh, but first, a spoiler warning is in effect.

Watch out for that first step.

It's a doozy.

This should seem simple, right?

So simple.

A time travel movie involves time travel thing being, but when you put that term under the microscope and start pulling at the strings, the definition unravels into a much more nebulous concept, one with which Groundhog Day has a rather complicated relationship.

Time travel What the vast majority of popular cinema is narrative driven, but there's more than one way to tell a story.

Many films play fast and loose with time and chronology without making their narrative explicitly centered on time travel.

Memento is a nonlinear head trip that will have you MAWR twisted up than 90% of time.

Travel movies.

How am I supposed to hear if I can feel time?

The Fountain and Cloud Atlas both take us on complex journeys through time, and yet neither can rightfully be called time.

Travel Movies from Womb to Tomb Way are bound to others e passed on present.

Where do you draw the line and where does Groundhog Day fall?

Someday somebody's gonna see me interviewing a groundhog.

Think I don't have a future?

I think it's a nice story.

In order to answer this question will be taking a look at the unifying features and characteristics that time travel movies overwhelmingly share in common.

Time Travel is a plot device, not a genre in and of itself bang.

Whether it's used in a thriller comedy or action film, there's often some shocking twist that implicates the protagonist or another character in unexpected ways.

The ending of 12 Monkeys is a great example phone call.

I just made five minutes ago.

Five minutes ago, 30 years ago.

They just put it together.

James Coles.

Traumatic childhood experience Takes on a whole new significance Predestination, starring Ethan Hawke, is a more recent example with a delightfully complex twist.

Can we change our futures?

I e don't know.

Arrival is one of those Gray area films.

Is it about time travel or the perception of time?

How could you know the future?

Regardless, Like many time travel movies, it brings things full circle in ways that wouldn't be possible without a character being displaced in time.

But what about our buddy Phil?

Given that he's reliving February 2nd over and over again, Groundhog Day is all about predictability.

August of Wind Dog barks.

Yeah, here the truck.

This proves to be surprisingly fertile ground for Bill Murray's comedic style, but no major plot twists racial clay.

When entering Lake Geneva, this river is clear blue.

Upon exiting Jim, what is the Rhone, the Rhone?

Good for $1000.

Instead, the film uses repetition to serve up a revelation of a more personal variety.

When Phil's imprisonment in punks, Itani invites self discovery, Well, sometimes I wish I had 1000 lifetimes I don't know, Phil.

Maybe it's not a curse.

Just depends on how you look at it.

One fact.

The film's original draft did actually include a massive twist in which we learn that Rita is stuck living the next day over and over again.

Time travel movies almost always involve a mechanism of some sort.

When this baby hits 88 MPH, you're gonna see some serious, most commonly time travel is made possible by some sort of time machine or a time master.

The latter is any individual with the ability to move themselves or others through time.

This might sting a little.

No.

As for the time Machine, it could be any device, magical, mechanical or even a force of nature like a black hole that makes time travel possible.

What about the times?

The pitch?

Neither one of us have time to worry about relativity right now, Dr Brand Most time travel films have certain rules, which are often tied to their mechanism of choice.

If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future and your former present becomes the past, which can't now be changed by your new future, exactly assuming a Christmas Carol isn't one big dream.

Even Charles Dickens provided a mechanism in the form of ghosts.

I could remember nearly 1900 years.

I am the ghost off Christmas past.

No one ever does a big exposition dump in Groundhog Day, however.

Nor does Phil ever discover why this is happening to him.

There are rules, and fill tests them in a variety of ways, but they don't yield any answers.

Apart from your stuck.

Every morning, I wake up without a scratch on me, not a dent in the fender.

I am immortal.

If Groundhog Day is a time travel movie, it's more interested in the journey than the science.

Speaking of rules, most time travel movies agree that you should not interact with your past.

Self careful things happen to wizards who meddled with time.

Harry Thean Click ations vary from one movie to the next, but it's almost always bad.

Seeing a doppelganger could drive you mad or even destroy you, because physics bank.

Then again, if the time travel movies subscribes to a closed loop theory in which everything has and always will play out, the same assist from your past, self may be an unavoidable part of the equation.

You're as bad as me, Ron.

I'm sitting it right.

Thankfully for Phil, he is the Onley.

Fill in punks Otani on February 2nd.

Well, other than the dont, of course.

And let's be honest, this town isn't big enough for two of him.

The master punks Itani fill the world's most famous weatherman, the Groundhog.

Rather than traveling from the future to the past and encountering his past self, Phil simply wakes up again the same morning in the same physical state as before, but remembering already having done so.

That's right, Woodchuck Chuck Er's It's Ground A.

We get that the time anomaly that Phil is experiencing is a uniquely frustrating one.

But hey, at least he doesn't have to worry about paradox.

Psychosis 37 Stages and Paradox Psychosis are Stage one Denial to Itching.

Three.

Extreme Thirst and Urination, four Excessive gas, five acute paranoia, six uncontrolled perspiration and seven homicide.

Already, when you mess with time, bad things can happen.

Just ask Marty McFly.

Third Time's a Charm one false move, and you can rewrite history or give your nemesis the tools to get filthy rich.

You might be a nobody back home.

But when you time travel lives, hang in the balance.

Funny, I never thought it would be you.

Time travel movies almost always involve an element of trying to rewrite the past or avoid messing it up in Terminator.

Changing the past is the machine mandate, and yet it's this time traveling arms race that actually leads to the birth of John Connor.

But I guess I have a while.

Yet before you're old enough to even understand these tapes.

The reality is, even a small change can have massive consequences.

Seriously, How many times did Ashton Kutcher's character get it wrong in the Butterfly effect?

Paul, you're gonna be OK.

Change it.

In Phil's case, however, the repetition makes him feel is if his actions have no consequences, Way could do whatever we wanted.

Oh, that's true.

We could do whatever we want.

And so he initially shows a complete disregard for the happiness and well being of both himself and others.

He explicitly puts himself in mortal danger to test the limits.

I'm betting he's gonna swear first.

In many ways, Groundhog Day flies in the face of time honored time travel themes by making Phil want nothing to do with this break in space time.

He doesn't desire to bring about, change or preserve anything.

He doesn't have any explicit purpose.

I'll give you a winter prediction.

It's gonna be cold.

It's gonna be gray and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.

Or so he thinks.

Bang thing.

While there's no authority to tell him what's going on, Phil does wind up finding meaning in his experience.

Yes, yes, I'd like a piano lesson, please.

This isn't a film about righting past wrongs, saving the future or establishing equilibrium in the time stream.

But despite his initial resistance, Phil's experience living the same day over and over again is a journey of personal growth.

One copy that it while attack.

Oh, thanks, Bill Larry.

Skim milk.

Two sugar, Yeah, thanks, Bill.

Wild time travel plots are inherently convoluted.

They most often follow fairly conventional narrative arcs.

By contrast, Groundhog Day is a deceptively simple but fascinating exercise in storytelling because it goes against how stories are typically told rather than the boredom one might expect.

The writers were able to find meaning in the repetition.

What did you do today.

Oh, same old.

Same.

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Have you reached a verdict?

The evidence has been presented, and we are ready to render our verdict.

Groundhog Day is not a time travel movie.

It's a time loop movie.

And while one could argue that this is just a subtype of the time travel genre, it's clearly cut from a very different cloth.

Okay, what do you want me to do?

I don't know.

The narrative structure of a time loop movie is such that it actually a shoes all the usual characteristics of a time travel movie in favor of one unifying principle.

Getting out of the time loop.

Something is different.

Good or bad, anything different is good.

Groundhog Day isn't a time travel movie, but it's arguably Mawr important.

As a result, it's been interpreted as everything from a spiritual guide book to an analogy about military service and a lesson in economics, no matter what happens tomorrow for the rest of my life.

I'm happy now because I love you, Phil.

Groundhog Day was not the first time loop film it did popularize the mechanic giving birth to numerous imitators.

It's when I was infinite time lip situations you might heard about that I might have heard about.

Yeah, from the concept of having the characters repetition cued by a certain song.

Gotta get up.

Gotta Get Out.

Gotta Get Home for the Morning comes to the now classic montage of Time Loop debauchery.

The film's influence reverberates throughout pop culture, and it does it on its own terms.

What a day this has been.

What a ram mood I'm in, why it's almost like being in love.

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