Back in January, the new movie Palm Springs broke a record for the highest sale at the Sundance Film Festival — by exactly 69 cents.

We should have seen that as an omen.

The movie began streaming on Hulu this past Friday, July 10th, and in less than a week, it has an 84% on MetaCritic and a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. Those are some impressively high accolades for any movie, but especially for a RomCom by a first-time director starring Andy Samberg. But, in my humble opinion, the film deserves it.

The elevator pitch for Palm Springs is essentially Groundhog's Day meets Hot Tub Time Machine meets Wedding Crashers — again, not the type of film you'd expect to garner such critical acclaim. Andy Samberg's character, Nyles, has been trapped in a time loop at a wedding where he doesn't know anyone except his girlfriend, who's in the wedding party, and also cheating on him. He is stuck at the resort, living the day over and over and over and over again, eventually resigning himself to the situation and trying to have some fun before the loop resets. When he tries to hook up with Sarah (Cristin Milioti), the older sister of the bride, he accidentally brings her into the time loop as well. And we soon learn that there are other wedding guests whose fates are now locked into this same endless repeating pattern. (Spoiler: one is JK Simmons, delightful as ever.)

Palm Springs does the expected job of working through all the humor of time travel and repetition; of course, the timeliness of its release during our collective societal quarantine probably helps to make that monotony feel even relatable. Read the rest