Sundance review: 'Palm Springs' is an even more existential 'Groundhog Day,' buoyed by two engaging leads

‘Palm Springs’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 90 minutes.

Screens again: Monday, Jan. 27, 11:30 p.m., Prospector (Park City); Wednesday, Jan. 29, 6:30 p.m. Rose Wagner (Salt Lake City); Thursday, Jan. 30, 6:30 p.m., Eccles (Park City); Saturday, Feb. 1, noon, Redstone 7 (Park City).

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Take “Groudhog Day,” move it to the California desert and a destination wedding, and make it a lot more existential, and you get “Palm Springs,” a hilarious comedy from the minds of The Lonely Island.

Lonely Islander Andy Samberg stars as Nyles, who walks through the wedding of a distant acquaintance — his girlfriend, Misty (Meredith Hagner), is a bridesmaid — in board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Mostly, though, he hangs around the pool at the Palm Springs resort where the destination wedding is being held, drinking beer and looking cynical about it all.

Near the end of the reception, Nyles makes eyes at Sarah (Cristin Milioti), another bridesmaid and sister of the bride, Tala (Camila Mendes). After proving that Misty is busy having sex with the DJ (Chris Pang), Nyles convinces Sarah to go make out by the rocks. Nyles’ hopes of having sex are thwarted when someone pops up and starts shooting arrows into Nyles. Nyles crawls to a nearby cave, and Sarah — despite Nyles’ warnings — follows him in.

Cut to: Nyles waking up, all over again, watching Misty getting ready. Nyles goes back to the pool, again, but this time, Sarah finds him, demanding to know what happened to her. Nyles explains that he’s been in an infinite time loop, repeating this wedding day over and over again — and that Sarah, because she entered the cave, is in that loop, too.

A lot of the humor in the script by Andy Siara — who developed the story with the film’s director, Max Barbakow — is in Nyles mentoring Sarah in her new life of repeating the same day again and again. Nyles has become jaded and existential, believing that there is no point in the universe so he tries to do as little as possible to get through his day, because he’s tried the alternative and he always winds up back at square one.

Barbakow paces the story, particularly the backward leapfrog of the resetting timer, with precision. But he also leaves room for his leads room to let the jokes and their personalities come out.

Samberg gives the most mature performance of his career, and his funniest since “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.” Milioti, already a Broadway phenom (“Once”) and a sitcom savior (she was the mother on “How I Met Your Mother”), deserves some full-fledged movie stardom — even if it comes with offers of rom-coms that aren’t half as smart as this one.