‘Groundhog Day’ ‘Hot Tub Time Machine,’ More

On February 2nd, 1993 — and on the infinite number of days that followed it — Bill Murray’s curmudgeonly weatherman Phil Connors woke up to the sounds of “I Got You Babe” and reported on the Groundhog Day festivities in Punxutawney, Pennsylvania. And while his displeasure about having to cover such a nonsensically rodent-centric holiday eventually faded, the enduring charm of “Groundhog Day” has not. 

In the three decades since Harold Ramis’ classic comedy hit theaters, the time loop formula of characters being stuck repeating a single day has been imitated by everyone from Tom Cruise to Natasha Lyonne. While the heights of “Groundhog Day” are hard to top, time loop films have become a charming addition to nearly ever genre under the sun. Ramis’ idea ended up providing a shot of adrenaline that allowed time travel cinema to flourish for another quarter century. 

Time travel has its roots in ancient myths and folk tales, but in terms of modern fiction, the concept can be traced to Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” An 1889 novel that used its premise of a normal American man bonking his head and ending up in Camelot to satirize feudalism and the monarchy, “Connecticut Yankee” made its way to cinemas in 1949 as a considerably more chipper Bing Crosby jukebox musical romance.

From that film, time travel started showing up earnestly in all kinds of different movies, mainly sci-fi adaptations like influential H.G….