Palm Springs (2020) is a sci-fi rom-com from debut writer-director Max Barbakow. It stars Andy Samberg and Cristin Millioti as two strangers who meet at a wedding and become trapped in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over. It debuted to strong reviews at this year’s Sundance Film Festival before hitting Hulu this weekend. Is this a fresh concept worth exploring, or a tired rehashing of familiar source material?
I was cautiously optimistic about this film going in. I love me a good time-loop story, and the trope has been done successfully several times in the past: Groundhog Day on the silly side, Source Code on the dramatic side, Edge of Tomorrow on the action side, and many more in between. The idea to apply the schtick to a rom-com intrigued me and had a lot of potential to draw commentary on modern romance and dating culture. Coupled with two appealing leads and the film’s strong Sundance hype, and I set my expectations pretty high. And dammit, this film still managed to hit them! While I certainly have some problems with Palm Springs, this was a pure delight from start to finish and one everyone should go see. With that, let’s get into the (fairly spoiler-y) review!
I knew from the first ten minutes of the film that I was in capable writing hands. Most stories like this would introduce us to the protagonist BEFORE he/she enters the time loop so we understand what they are like before the craziness begins. This film subverts that expectation immediately by introducing us to Nyles when he’s already long, long past the point of accepting his fate. We meet him through Sarah’s eyes as she witnesses his weird seeming ability to predict time and always say the right thing. That’s a fun bit of dramatic irony as the audience knows something the character doesn’t, but conversely we don’t know exactly how deep into this Nyles already is! There’s a popular video essay about the 2016 film Passengers that posits the theory that it would have worked much, much better if we saw it through Jennifer Lawrence’s eyes rather than Chris Pratt’s. This film proves the theory correct, as introducing that element of doubt makes the eventual reveal of how the loop works that much more impactful and worth waiting for.
That willingness to withhold information from the audience is not just a one-time decision, either: the film holds its cards fairly close to the chest and does a great job of gradually pulling back the curtain for us. While Sarah starts out as a generic girl-next-door foil to Nyles, we come to learn that she’s not perfect herself and has dark secrets of her own. The film excels as a mystery in that respect, doing a great job of seamlessly introducing setups we don’t recognize as such with payoffs much later once the full context re-forms our understanding of a moment. For instance, we don’t learn that Sarah is sleeping with her sister’s fiancé until halfway through the movie, and that colors every interaction between them in fascinating ways. I’ve also said it before and will say it again: I LOVE when a film is unafraid to make their protagonists flawed and problematic. That’s the only way to instigate change and demonstrate growth in your characters…they have to start off in a worse place than they ultimately end up, and the film does a fantastic job at that while still letting us sympathize with them and their mistakes.
The film tackles some rather dark subject matter, namely the specific millennial brand of nihilism and the sense of dread that accompanies the prospect of dying alone. This theme also fits in perfectly with the time loop and the characters’ relationship to it: if nothing they do matters, why care about anything? That parallels the same feeling of emptiness and lack of connection of modern relationships…both Sarah and Nyles are in loveless relationships but simply fear being alone so they do nothing about it. Why care about making human connections when you believe all relationships will be robotic and meaningless? It’s also fitting that the day is structured around a wedding, as it forces these characters to face the promise of matrimony day after day. But as the characters start to develop feelings for each other, their worldview starts to subtly shift and they are forced to change, rather than the plot requiring them to – a great decision. The way Nyles and Sarah grow as people feels very organic, despite the formulaic plot structure – but more on that in a bit.
The film works best when it isn’t taking itself too seriously, which it mostly doesn’t. My favorite moments ended up being the “montage” or “in-between” sequences where the characters play around with the rules of the world and taking full advantage of the fun they can have with it…crashing airplanes, planting bombs in the wedding cake, playing God with unsuspecting wedding guests. The problems start to come in as the writers seek to “solve” the time loop problem and explain the specific mechanics of the magic cave or whatever. The audience doesn’t care about how or why it’s happening, they just want to enjoy the kooky shenanigans the time loop allows! The given solution to the problem involves quantum physics and some convoluted strategy to escape the loop, which felt like a sloppy conclusion with no bearing on the characters’ arcs. I get the desire to differentiate yourself from Groundhog Day, but that film’s solution involved necessary change for the protagonists. But more importantly, it did not ask for great leaps in logic or technobabble that the audience has no interest in. Keep it simple, stupid!
The other major problem is just how formulaic the rom-com elements of the story are. As clever and innovative as the sci-fi aspects of the story are, it feels like insufficient attention was paid to the romance at the heart of the film. If you’ve seen at least one rom-com, you can basically predict every major emotional beat this film is going to hit at what times. It’s like a stripped-down checklist of every rom-com trope in one film! The short runtime exacerbates this problem; because there is so little fat, the formula under the surface is laid bare so you can never forget about it. It was a damn shame when I realized halfway through the movie exactly how the film was going to play out from there! For as well as the film managed to surprise and entertain me in the first half, the second half was a massive letdown. They tied up all the thematic loose ends neatly and all, so I can’t say it doesn’t work, but it felt unnecessarily derivative and basic for how intriguing the original premise is.
I definitely don’t want to give the impression that I hated this movie or anything, because I quite liked it. I feel somewhat compelled to nitpick only because I’ve heard such raves coming out of Sundance and want to inject a little reality into this supposed rom-com masterpiece. This film is not about to change the game and barely (if at all) escapes the trappings of the genre in the first place. But all that being said, it’s still well-written and a consistently-fun time throughout. So much of this film’s success rests on the chemistry between Andy Samberg and Cristin Millioti, and they played off of each other perfectly! Samberg gets plenty of opportunity to show off his comedic chops of course, but he shows a surprising amount of depth and emotion I didn’t expect out of him. Similarly, this is the first big role I’ve seen for Millioti since How I Met Your Mother, and she proved she can hold her own as a leading woman. I also had no idea J.K. Simmons was in this until he showed up, which was a pleasant surprise…he kills it in every role, and I loved his character in this! Add it strong camera work and appealing color schemes, and I can’t point to much beyond the script that’s not up to par. Great job by all involved!
Conclusion
Far from a masterpiece, but still one of the more clever and entertaining rom-coms we’ve seen in years! Andy Samberg and Cristin Millioti have fantastic chemistry and more than capably carry the film, showing off their comedic and dramatic chops beautifully. I loved the way the film plays with information to keep the plot fresh, even if the end result is a rather formulaic boy-loses-girl-and-gets-her-back story. The first half is definitely stronger than the second, but it didn’t completely drop the ball with the ending so it’s mostly forgivable. There are some hilarious sequences that make full use of the possibilities of the world, and there is just enough unique flair to differentiate this from every other time loop story we’ve seen in recent years. It’s a film I can recommend to just about anyone, and while it may not become a cult classic I can see myself revisiting this many years down the road and rewatching it for pure enjoyment’s sake. We don’t get that kind of replay value much these days, which is a testament to strong filmmaking from all involved! Well done.
VERDICT: B+
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-Austin Daniel
Scriptophile 