There are few movies as completely perfect as Groundhog Day. I remember seeing the film in theaters and being blown away by how dark it got and how that darkness made the ending not just palatable but flat out deserved – this is a lesson more movies could learn. And over the years it’s been great seeing the movie slowly begin to take its place as a Great Film, a beautiful and beautifully told story that has a rewatchability perfect for a film about a man reliving the same day over and over again.
The movie is so good that I can’t begrudge a double dip of the DVD, especially since the new disc, a 15th Anniversary edition, will have supposedly newly discovered deleted scenes. Here’s the thing about DVD special features: the older the film, the more special they are. Deleted scenes from a movie that came out six months ago are a curiosity at best; deleted scenes from a film older than Wilmer Valderrama’s conquests are a revelation. They allow you to look at a familiar movie from a fresh perspective.
The DVD, coming on January 29th, will be digitally remastered and feature a new Harold Ramis commentary (at least I think it’s new. He did one for the last release, so it may be a port of that commentary). I find that I buy fewer and fewer DVDs lately – I have too many and too few are watched – but this one is going into my collection.
You can pre-order the DVD through CHUD by clicking here. Check out that terrible cover, though – Bill Murray looks airbrushed within an inch of his life. And the PhotoShopper who put that together before dashing off to lunch has Andie McDowell looking off to the sky to indicate to us that this is wacky stuff. What a great movie, what a piece of shit cover.