What comes to mind when you think of a loop story? The concept has been leveraged so many times and in so many ways that it is almost a challenge now to come up with something inventive without ending up extracting something from what has already been released.
Palm Springs movie breaks that notion by being utterly ingenious. It walks in with a love story that beats, hands down, every mainstream flick without even trying too hard. Whilst the romance is riddled with guilt and acceptance, it wades through seamlessly in its very own one of a kind loop story.
Whilst it ambles past the rocks of derision, it does not at any point make you feel absurd. The humour Palm Springs carries, takes away all your attention from such minutia. It just smartly escapes the realms of sci-fi without delving into the Science of it. You are not dilating your eyes at its causal preface, but laughing it off entertained by the backdrop of its humour and romance.
Let us dive deep into the Palm Springs movie review now.
Editing and Direction – Palm Springs Movie Review
Talk about the editing of the movie, it is an absolute delight to watch. Bold to experiment with frames which only aces the movie’s comic touch. Gives it perspective and a way forward which the cast so beautifully carries with their powerful performances.
The direction of the movie done by Max Barbakow is too good for a comedy. It has the right amount of depth when needed and becomes comic really quick too. He plays around with the many twists of the tale making you really feel the absence of a character and then later shows things from their vantage too.
But we have to give it to the screenplay of Andy Siara who weaves magic with his story. Time loop stories have kind of become redundant, but it is the way you play with it basically dictates what you have to offer.
I felt everything I’ll ever feel. So I’ll never feel ever again.
The editing of the movie is also a delight to watch. You can see a lot of smart work ingrained in its frames, the way they really chase subtlety.
There is probably not a single moment in the movie that bores you. There is always something exciting and happening going on.
Performances by the Cast – Palm Springs Movie Review
Palm Springs movie is primarily fuelled by the excellent performances of its cast.
Andy Samberg as Nyle
Taking the bandwagon forward is none other than Andy Samberg as Nyles who plays a carefree bloke, well basically himself. You can literally feel the character waddling in peace, doing things as he pleases, and you can bite on the logic behind.
If you were living the same day over and over again, you would end up becoming kind of like him too.
He is carefree and reckless with his ways. He has done all the stupid stuff that one could imagine. That’s why there is a big smile on his face, at all times, because it is like, kind of been there done that for him. Also, the fact that nothing really matters signs off on his face.
Such a kind of lifestyle is reciprocated into the lives of many people even today, and you stop to wonder if such people have become so accustomed to the mundane that nothing surprises them?
Cristin Milioti as Sarah
For Cristin, playing Sarah feels like resurrection, after the crowd didn’t take even a second to forget her from being the mother from How I Met Your Mother.
It was like a smear hard to rub off. Even though her role was chopped off, the build up was huge. To rise from there, it would have taken a role like that of Sarah, and surprise, surprise! She pulls it off.
One of the major twists the ploy holds is using her character. Au contraire to Nyle, for whom waking up the same day wasn’t that big a problem, for Sarah it was. Because she would wake up in guilt every day.
Christin’s Sarah houses a wrong that she did, and waking up every day would mean facing the aftermath every single day. The good part was spending every day with Nyle that ends up making her fall in love with him. But the guilt where she resuscitates from stops her from being vocal to her emotions.
The best part is how her character develops herself to become smart by teaching herself about Quantum Physics to get out of the loop, while Nyle is busy being okay with the unending daily cycle.
One other character that makes the movie entertaining is that of Roy portrayed by J. K. Simmons. His idea of getting to live just one day, helps bring things in perspective.
The Existential Question
When you think of it, Palm Springs movie kind of tries to reflect our kind of living. The way we perform our daily chores. All we do is repeat the same thing over and over again. It is a perennial cycle of worldliness that we can’t escape, and we are so okay with it that we don’t try to get out of it.
Our actions don’t have meaning. Whatever we do, it resets the next day. We don’t wake up with guilt when there is holy water of confession to absolve us. We let ourselves get absolved by the sands of time, and then become complacent like Nyle.
We are okay with just eating and sleeping, and then repeating the whole cycle over again. When did we do something out of the ordinary? Did we contribute anything worthwhile?
The Logistics in Movie Palm Springs Review
The only thing you might be confused about is how the Palm Springs movie doesn’t care about the logistics. There are tons of questions that you might have related to the specifics. Not a lot of thought has gone into it, and the writers have done a shoddy job there.
Some of the questions you might have would include – if a person were to kill themselves, would their waking up timeline be different from the original loop?
If that were the case what would happen to the other guy? Would they still have to live the whole day before it resets for the first person? Would the resetting, also reset the whole day for the rest of the cursed characters?
The Final Verdict
Overall the Palm Springs movie is very entertaining. It has its twists and turns and shows things from the vantage of both the main actors in the movie. The editing is rock solid and so is its direction. With an ingenious plot to back everything up it becomes a complete package.
Check out the trailer of Palm Springs movie here:
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Palm Springs
Pros
- Amazing plot
- Great direction
- Powerful performances
Cons
- Overlooks logistics
