The Lonely Island boys have now taken to producing films and one of the their first efforts is that of Palm Springs, a time-loop rom-com set in and around a wedding where two guests, Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, end up living the same day over and over again, considering the meaningless nature of that life, before falling in love. Romance and comedy ensue, everybody has a perfectly fine time and then goes home. For as much as Palm Springs is visually very different from many standard comedies and rom-coms of the day, the overall feel is that of being pretty bland. No surprises really occur and no shifts from the normal rom-com formula are made, bar the obvious time-loop sci-fi element. Later in my conclusion I will use the word “serviceable”. I will use it again here. Serviceable. For me that is exactly what the film is, and rather unfortunately not much more. The films many highlights just don’t add up to anything too great, in my opinion, and it is certainly not a film that I will find myself watching again.
The allusions to our current lives when it comes to any time-loop film have been made painfully clear in article after article and review after review, as if the notion that we are all living in a Groundhog Day situation is lost on any of us. I bring this up because of those very special two words I just used; Groundhog Day. Ten years from now people will not refer to repeated days as Covid or even Lockdown, people will say Groundhog Day. I doubt that in ten years people will say that they are living in a Palm Springs situation, because I do feel the timing of our current lives has helped the punch of this film immensely. I won’t spend any more time in this review comparing the two films, because I think it’d be fruitless and unfair to our film today, afterall one is a seminal masterpiece of drama, romance and comedy, and the other is a very serviceable rom-com with multiple flourishes that do make it feel different from the current glut of unexceptional rom-coms we’ve received in recent years – however for me Palm Springs felt cute, watchable and pleasantly nihilistic, but was never overly funny, never overly believable in its romance and ultimately not that interesting. And frankly, yes, a little too trite and glaringly reminiscent of Ramis and Murray’s classic. To site a film as an influence doesn’t mean for me that you can take its entire structure wholesale and just remove all the things that made it special. All in all I have to say I’ve opened pretty harshly, for what a fine film this is. But in reality it is just that, “fine”, and for me frankly nothing more than that. Max Barbakow, the film’s director and one of its writers, really does make many visual choices that keep the film going at a nice clip, along with his editors Andrew Dickler and Matt Friedman, and cinematographer Quyen Tran. However despite being 90 minutes, the film does drag a little in the painfully obvious second act rom-com argument. Although in this case the argument is of course discussing some pretty big themes, it still is just so obviously formulaic that it makes me feel nothing.
All around it has to be said however that the performances are what make the film work as good as it does for the most part. Samberg and Milioti are two fairly charismatic individuals who manage to imbue the romance and comedy with a believability, in a way that is unfortunately floundered by some of the more absurd moments in the script, including a couple of pretty cringey experiments in the “f*ck it, this is our lives now” montage about mid-way through. For me certainly the best part of the film was J.K Simmons, as Roy. Although the origins of his character came off as pretty forced and frankly out of character, the eventual trajectory of his character was one that really did bring home the sort of human element I wanted in the relationship between Nyles and Sarah (Samberg and Milioti’s characters). Beyond Simmons, the film has a nice ensemble, with Peter Gallagher, Meredith Hagner and Tyler Hoechlin all delivering smaller funny moments. However the two biggest minor standouts for the film have to be June Squibb and Jena Freidman, as two passers-through at the wedding that offer small and very effective moments. It is exactly these sorts of moments that lead me to be more frustrated with Palm Springs than anything. For me these great little moments were many and frequent, but never amounted to much of anything. Palm Springs is very watchable, marginally funny at times and fleetingly romantically touching. But it does all in all for me just come that little bit up short compared to other films of its ilk.
A very serviceable 7/10. I’ll allow myself now one more comparison for my conclusion. People have referred to this as Groundhog Day as a rom-com, forgetting that Groundhog Day was a rom-com to begin with. This films comedy and romance is there, but for me was just very surface level and smirk-inducing. Never a proper laugh and never a major flourish of the heart. The film we have here is a very well made feature from Barbakow that never rests on its laurels, and Samberg, Milioti and Simmons all offer great performances. However whether it was through the reminiscence of other films, or through the films own basic structure and lack of invention; Palm Springs was for me a perfectly fine film that ironically I will never watch again.
P.S. The final shot of the film offered a subtlety of ideas and experimentation that the rest of the film sorely missed in my opinion. However gives me the chance to say that looking at the horizon in that final shot, does mirror the way in which I look to the horizon for the next films by Samberg, Barbakow, Siara and Milioti. For as I say the film does offer glimpses of a future film of a better quality. Not that this film was bad. I just feel, or rather I hope that something better is coming soon.
- - Thomas Carruthers
 – Review){kind=link}
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