It’s always nice to be able to tick off a few categories in one go. Short feature – tick, Groundhog Day theme – tick, another chance to watch the awesome Kurtwood Smith – tick, tick, tick! 12:01 PM ticks all the boxes. Well… sort of. The “sort of” comes from the fact that 12:01 PM was made in 1990 and Groundhog Day came out in 1993. Perhaps we should start calling them 12:01 PM themed films…
12:01 PM starts with a bemused and bewildered Myron Castleman (Kurtwood Smith) blinking in the light as he stands on a small (≈1m ø) traffic island with traffic hurtling around him. From here he heads to a park for his lunch where he encounters various people and events; a couple of men talking, a group of city types, a beggar, a woman sketching.
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He’s obviously aware of being trapped in a loop and can’t understand why or how to break free.
And You Thought Phil Connors Had It Bad
A big difference between 12:01 PM and Groundhog Day is that while Phil Connors had a day to do things, like study French literature and playing the piano, Myron Castleman only has fifty-nine minutes to play with before the crackling sound and swirling lights indicate that he’s about to reappear on his traffic island.
As a result, he struggles to do anything meaningful, until one day he comes across a newspaper that has a story about a Nobel prize-winning physicist (who looks disturbingly like Jeff Bezos), which sets him off on a search for answers. Obviously, with regard to spoilers, any more and that cat is not only out of the bag, but climbing the curtains and shredding the nets.
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Instead, I’ll talk about Kurtwood Smith
I first became aware of him as the delightfully evil Clarence Boddicker in RoboCop. He is one of those actors who can’t help but draw your eye to them; Michael Ironside, Christopher Walken, and any of the Buseys are others. As well as being striking to look at, the guy can act. 12:01 PM is only twenty-five minutes in length but, despite that, there is a whole range of emotions, reactions, and responses on display — and Kurtwood nails them all.
So It’s The Same But Different?
Whereas Groundhog Day is an out-and-out comedy, 12:01 PM is listed as a Sci-Fi Thriller, but I would have said it was more of a Philosophical Drama.
There is a scientist, the Nobel prize-winning Professor Nathan Rosenbluth (Don Amendolia), who wears a white coat and talks about “consciousness being an independent variable outside the mechanism of the universe” — but that’s about it, unless you count the swirly light reset sequence which looks a bit like someone had seen the “Star Gate” sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey once and then been given a packet of crayons and asked to animate it from memory.
As for other differences, I’d say that you need to trawl through YouTube and find 12:01 PM and watch it. There are far fewer laughs along the way and the ending is not what you’d normally think of as happy, but it is definitely worth a half-hour of anyone’s time.
Be warned though that you need to search for 12:01 PM, as there is a made-for-TV film called by the much snappier title 12:01.
Movie Grade: A
Here; is an excellent, humorous 4 minute Groundhog Day short that’s one Black man’s GHD experience —
Every Groundhog Day Type Movie & TV Episode – The Ultimate Repeating Day List
This year’s best GHD hit (on Hulu): Boss Level is excellent in almost every way —
And all of our Groundhog Day type film and TV episode reviews —
Every Groundhog Day Type Movie & TV Episode – The Ultimate Repeating Day List
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