You can watch it with the sound off and it works just as well. You can watch it while distracted and it works just as well. You can put the kids to bed, dim the lights and kick on the surround, and it works just as well. It’s seamless.
Plenty of movies are seamless, of course. GROUNDHOG DAY stands apart because, in addition to being seamless and funny and quotable and all that, it’s a near-perfect depiction of samsara.
Hey, wait a minute! Somebody else already wrote what I was going to write, but better! Here’s the relevant passage from a piece on Bill Murray in The Onion AV Club:
… “samsara”—the endless cycle of birth and rebirth that can only be escaped when one achieves total enlightenment. In the film, Murray’s sarcastic, self-serving weatherman is forced to repeat a single day out of his life until he comes to terms with the Four Noble Truths: 1) Life is suffering (but that doesn’t mean you have to add to it by being a jerk). 2) The origin of suffering is attachment to desire (so don’t spend your days robbing banks, stuffing your face with danishes, and trying to bamboozle your way into Andie MacDowell’s pants). 3) There is a way out (by dedicating your time to bettering yourself), and 4) it involves following the “eightfold path,” which means revoking self-indulgence and becoming a “bodhisattva”—someone who acquires skills and uses them in the selfless service of others (like changing an old lady’s tire, saving kids who fall out of trees, and performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking victim). As a result of Murray’s generous acts, he receives the love of the whole town—a oneness with the universe—and is allowed to evolve past the cycle of samsara to nirvana.
That is all.
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