70 - 12:01

    A research facility accidentally creates a time loop.  A low-level employee preserves his memory as each day loops.  He discovers the cause of his predicament and uncovers a mystery at his work.
    Obviously, this will be compared with Groundhog Day.  It’s not worth saying that one ripped the other off, since this went into production first, but they were both released very close to each other.  But it’s worth exploring the differences of how these stories approached the premise.
    In this case, our hero focuses on solving a mystery, and getting his girl.  There’s a specific cause to his loop, and he knows what it is.  This contrasts with Groundhog Day, where the hero doesn’t know the cause, never learns what it is, and the only problem to solve is more of a personal growth one.
    I had one particular problem with this movie, and it was mostly the lead.  The main character is a bit of a goofball.  But he’s actually a bit too much of a jerk to make him worthwhile.  I would be fine with him being a jerk, except that he remains too much of a jerk throughout the movie.  By the end, his improvement is entirely superficial.  He gets his girl, but he gets his girl in a way that seems more like cheating than improvement.
    On the other hand, I actually like the approach of solving a mystery in this fashion.  There’s the structure of the workday to drive things forward.  It’s nice that he takes notes and figures out when and where to do things.  But this is counterbalanced by him not learning to repeat actions that worked in the past.
    There’s one thing that especially bothered me about this movie, and that’s the title.  A short way through it, I realized that there was a better title; The Bounce.
    The story degenerates from being amusing and clever into being a bit of a hammy whodunnit.  But there’s not much I can complain about.  This was a made-for-TV production.