Palms Spring is the BEST Movie of the Year
This is the official, independent, honest review of the new movie Palm Springs starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti and if you don’t like this movie you fucking suck.
It’s been a while since I posted a review on this site and frankly the reason is that nothing has really grabbed me and inspired me to do so. It’s not that I haven’t been watching things. I watched Hunters on Amazon Prime. I watched The Politician season 2. Hunters was pretty good and The Politician season 2 was mediocre compared to its first season.
Palm Springs, however, blew me away. This movie was firing on all cylinders for me. First, it’s funny; Andy Samberg’s signature goofy mix of verbal wit and comedic facial acting, which I’ve always enjoyed from his SNL Lonely Island days all the way through Brooklyn Nine-Nine gets a dramatic evolution in Palm Springs where it becomes layered and matured by a character who’s complex and nihilistic.
Cristin Milioti, who I know only as the mother from How I Met Your Mother (another great show, and by the way the guy who plays Ted in How I Met Your Mother was one of the highlights of Hunters), really comes into her own here as a comedic headliner rather than a supporting actress.
The whole thing reminds me of a Ben Stiller comedy. It’s smart and has heart. I really like a lot of Ben Stiller’s movies so this is a solid compliment from me, however, I think this movie is better than any of Ben Stiller’s movies. It’s smarter and its nihilistic philosophy resonates with me (which you obviously could guess if you frequent my site). In a way, it’s sort of like the Ben Stiller formula mixed with just the right amount of Coen Brothers depth.
The nihilistic philosophy in this movie is an actual contemplation on nihilism as a philosophical concept and spiritual foundation in a way that hasn’t been covered in media since The Midnight Gospel and The Good Place. This movie is steeped in it. It aggressively gets it.
From the discussions of the meaninglessness of existence and the creation of meaning through experience, to finding peace in the context of the reality of nihilism, to the quantum physics evidence of the multiverse and simulation theory, to the YOLO nothing matters let’s just have fun approach to life and the dichotomy of fun vs suffering, this movie’s concept gets it, the characters get it quite clearly through their contemplations and even the main character’s name (Nyles) is clearly a reference to modern philosophical nihilism. I would definitely say Palm Springs deserves to be in the canon.
In addition to performances from Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti that really represent a paradigm shift for each of them as actors, J.K. Simmons plays a supporting character who is so interesting and likable that you wish he could be in the movie more, but you know he’s in there just the right amount.
Let’s be real. 2020 has been a real shitshow. Pandemic, mass job loss, race riots, murder hornets, supercharged cancel culture, Kanye West is running for President. Remember when we bombed an Iranian general and World War 3 almost started? Remember when Australia was on fire for weeks? The world is chaos. And the reaction to all of this has been indescribable anxiety, frustration and resistance. But Palm Springs finds the peace. It embraces chaos, and it offers a model that I think people might find comforting in these times, which people should look to much, much more so than they look to the vitriol and outrage of 24/7 politics.
It gets it. Crack open a beer, have fun and try to enjoy it. Nothing matters, so you should try to make it the best ride ever and the only work that has any real meaning is improving the ride. Have a great ride. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Watch Palm Springs. It’s dope. It’s on Hulu.
