‘Groundhog Day’ Sequel ‘Yesterday’ Could Have Used a Large Squirrel

What do you get when you churn out a Groundhog Day sequel without a groundhog? You get a movie that’s careening on the railroad tracks, that’s what.

To be fair, Yesterday is a pleasant love story filled with more Beatles’ tunes than you can illegally download. If you’ve never seen Groundhog Day, maybe that’s enough to keep your attention for a couple of hours. However, for those of us who have waited decades for this sequel, it was a long and winding road to nowhere.

Dissimilar plots

There certainly have been Oscar-worthy sequels with very different plots than the original movie.

Speed 2: Cruise Control ditches the L.A. city bus in favor of a Caribbean cruise liner. Weekend at Bernie’s II  similarly ends up in the Caribbean and involves fantasy necrophilia and frantic grave-robbing. Dumb and Dumber To  featured Harry and Lloyd witlessly searching for Harry’s heretofore unknown daughter — decades later.

But, c’mon. At least Speed 2 retained Sandra Bullock and involved another out-of-control vehicular event. Weekend at Bernie’s II resurrected Bernie and a cornucopia of corpse hilarity. Dumb and Dumber To still had the same the two blithering idiots from the original flick.

Yesterday had no connections to Groundhog Day. Nada, nyet, bupkis. The action did not occur on February 2nd and made no references to the holiday whatsoever. Although the cast was diverse (Himesh Patel and Lily James were the romantic leads), the musical score — unlike Groundhog Day’s — was strangely fixated on Beatles’ hits. Not one actor from the 1993 movie even had a brief cameo. What does that tell you about the sequel?

Although as with Groundhog Day, an unexplained metaphysical occurrence triggered the events that transpired, that was Yesterday’s only vague connection to its predecessor. That’s it. No Bill Murray, no Andie McDowell, no large squirrel, no nothing.

Yesterday in name only

Forget the missing squirrel for a moment. One would think that Yesterday would devote at least some of its story to, you know, time travel.

After all, that was the repeated (and repeated, and repeated) plot device of Groundhog Day. Weatherman Phil Connors gets caught in a same-day time loop while reluctantly reporting on Punxsutawney Phil’s annual February 2nd shadow/no shadow ceremony. The metaphysics aren’t ever explained, but nobody gave a rat’s behind. We bought it, hook, line and sinker.

Where was the time travelling in Yesterday? We didn’t rewind 24 hours a hundred times like in the original. There were no jumps into the future and back to the past as in Back to the Future. We didn’t even slip into a temporal vortex like in Star Trek: First Contact.

A sequel to one of the classic comedies of all time, minus everything. That should be Yesterday’s tagline.

#NowWatching 4⃣1⃣3⃣ #Yesterday 🎸

Seen it? Leave your thoughts and we'll read some out on the show! #FilmTwitter #YesterdayMovie #YesterdayFilm

Check out Episode #68 – Groundhog Day ⏰
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— The IMDB Journey Podcast (@imdbjourney) July 7, 2019

My rating

I’ve had people complain that my ratings system is rather harsh. Early this year, I called the Netflix avian documentary Bird Box a “fluttering failure” and gave it one star. Last year, I considered the romantic comedy Zero Dark Thirty a “tactical misfire” and assigned it 1 1/2 stars.

On the flip side, there was my glowing preview of Universal Picture’s Apollo 13 Phew! musical comedy remake, featuring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Tyler Perry in a space dress. That preview proved I can be fair in my approach, provided I’m given enough meat on the proverbial bone.

Sadly, Yesterday had no gristle. It was as light and fluffy as an Eggo, spent too much paying homage to the Beatles, and inexplicably failed to emulate its vastly superior predecessor Groundhog Day in any way, shape or form. I did enjoy the tunes and found the chemistry between Patel and James to be appealing, which added a healthy dose of buoyancy to an otherwise fizzling story line.

As Phil Connors once said, “They used to pull the hog out, and they used to eat it.” Yesterday could have benefited from a large squirrel predicting the weather.

* *  stars.

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