The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Palm Springs’ (Spoilers)

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Spoilers for ‘Palm Springs’ in this episode. The film, starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, is an enjoyable, genre-bending rom-com.  Hosts: Chris Ryan, Juliet Litman, and Jason Concepcion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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slash price match for details. Hello, and welcome to TV concierge. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the ringer.com. This is your podcast where Ringer staffers help you navigate the wild world of streaming. And today we're talking about Palm Springs, a new movie released on who over the weekend

that a lot of people were talking about. I'm joined today by Juliet, Lidman, and Jason Concepcion. Say hi, guys. Hello. Hi. You may wonder, what makes us qualified to talk about Palm Springs? I'm glad you asked.

I'll tell you, I'm a guy who loves weddings and I love beer. Juliet is a gal who loves weddings and loves rom-coms. And Jason is a guy who I think loves weddings, but definitely loves time travel. And that's why we are the Supreme Court of this movie. Juliet Litman, give me your verdict on Palm Springs. B minus.

Okay. I feel like you're hitting the minus pretty hard there. Yeah. I don't know. I'm shocked at the level of approval. I just feel like the discourse I was seeing really blew my mind. And I'm excited to get into with you guys. Jason, I have a feeling like you're going to come on the other side of this crossfire debate.

Yeah, I'm going to give it an A. Also, just for your information, I've been recording this podcast for approximately 10,000 years. I've been trapped in this one podcast session. I'm just doing it over and over. And I think I've got it perfected now. I think that I'm going to go a Quar 8A. So. Quar A.

So a qualified quare. So what that means is that given the circumstances, I was fucking delighted by this. I was just like, I have nothing else going on. I have nothing better to do. These two people are delightful at stars, Andy Sandberg. And Christine Malati and Miliotti. Is that right?

I think it's Milliotti. Kristen Miliotti. Why do I always say Christine? I think that's like some residual how I met your mother mistake I just made. I think it's because Christian Miliati. She's a Kristen with a C. And I think that's just not as common. That might be it.

In any case, my apologies to Kristen. And my apologies to anybody who didn't love this movie, including Juliette, because I just found myself completely charmed by it. Now, I think one thing that's interesting, Juliet, is that we should note, you also did not like another very beloved Hulu film about weddings plus one, which a lot of people like last year. So why don't you get into, like, what is it about these? kinds of spins on the rom-com

and specifically these spins on the wedding rom-com that you reject. I just want to note before doing so that the stars were aligned for me to like this movie. I think barring the immediate family members of the Lonely Island trio, I am like the biggest Lonely

Island fan. Like, I watch Lonely Island videos by myself very often. I love the work of Andy Sandberg. So I was like very excited. I prefer him as Connor for Real. I have to never stop popping pop star and i also i really love romcoms and more than that i love hulu like i'm a hulu power user happened for the beginning so i was like this is great all these things that i like

um i like a rom-com to like feel happy and inspired and i like weddings to like feel hopeful about the future and i feel this movie did not engage in either of those vibes and i don't i'm not looking for like a genre-bending rom-com. Like, just give me some Nancy Myers, give me some Nora Ephron, give me some Gary Marshall. Like, I'm good. Those movies are good,

and they stand the test of time. And I think Andy Sandberg could be a great leading man in a rom-com, but I think I'll never know. Jason, I bet you and I, we're like more like, to make a great rom-com,

you need a little bit of peanut butter and a little bit of moldy jam. You know what I mean? Listen, moldy jam, extremely timely. I'm going to, I, I think it had those elements. For me, it had those elements. And I thought that combining these tropes in this particular way, I was delighted by it.

Now, admittedly, I knew nothing going into this movie except that Andy Samberg and Milliatty were in this and that the script had been kicking around for a while. But I found myself charmed and delighted and really entertained. by the spins that Palm Springs put on the time travel living the same day over and over Groundhog Day tropes.

I found it to be super fun. I would also say that I love Palm Springs as a place. I enjoy it. So I'm biased in that way. Crucial. I despise it. I absolutely despise it. In fact, the Bachelorette with Claire Crawley is currently filming. They're doing their

five weeks of production at the Lakinta Inn or in resort in Palm Springs. And like, I was looking up the weather and I was like, holy shit, they're filming the Bachelorette for five weeks in 115 degree desert heat. It's a dry heat, though. Bade me in the humidity of the East Coast in August. Absolutely not. No thank you on Palm Springs. Jason, you mentioned Groundhog Day, which I think a lot of people have been referring to in regards to Palm Springs. But the thing I really liked about this movie was how they let Andy Samberg do the Bill Murray part, but they let Kristen Miliani play the fish out of water part. And she goes like completely hammer on it,

where she's really good at swearing and drinking and spectacularly committing suicide and really like obviously soul searching throughout this movie. It's really more about her character than it is about Sambergs who is just allowed to wear a Hawaiian shirt and float around in a pool and crush tons of beers and be kind of like the wise ones, one. Like, I know it eventually he has to kind of come to terms with the J.K. Simmons character

who's been hunting him with a bow and arrow, among other things. But I really enjoyed the fact that they kind of inverted that Groundhog Day thing where it wasn't all about Andy Sandberg going through this process. Yeah, it's like, it reminded me a lot of that, what's that Pat Riley quote, like, you have to be an active participant in your own rescue. I liked the way that Andy had that wisdom. He's there as the character that's going to show Miliati the Ropes, but he's also like fundamentally given up. He's not trying to figure out what's going on. He feels like he's tried that.

He's exhausted all these possibilities. He's not trying to get out of here. You know, the worst thing that happens to him is occasionally J.K. Simmons comes and feathers his body with arrows. But other than that, he's like, you know, I can deal with this. This is, life means nothing anymore except this. and I have accepted it. And then, and then Miliani's character comes in and it's just like, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm unwilling to do that. I'm going to, I'm going to study the science. I'm going to figure out how we can possibly get out of here. And I'm going to devote all my energies to that. And I thought, I thought that kind of duality of one person who's given up, one person who refuses to give up, is really what generated a lot of, of the kind of emotional heft for me, that kind of idea of, are we doing this because we need to, figure something out about our life. Now, they don't really come down on that side of it,

but they also do, you know, like a deal with their demons in a sense. Yeah, I also like the fact that, like, they, they definitely, like, play out every possibility of, like, if you knew you were going to, you couldn't die and that you were going to live every day over and over again, how poorly would you treat your body? You know, would you smoke meth and try to fly to Equatorial New Guinea or whatever and would you would like would you would you would you would you would you would you become an expert in this that or the other thing. Julietette were there parts of this movie that you did find yourself charm by it all? Yeah.

Andy Sandberg is incredibly charming. Great actor. Great comedian. Really enjoyed when he steps into the wedding festivities to help with a speech. Everyone loves to be saved from a bad speech. But I have two questions for you guys that come up for me and think about this movie. Number one, were you aware that Grand Hog Day was acknowledged as being a perfect film, like 10 out of 10? Yeah.

I was not. I really like Grand Hog Day, but I was like, oh, I didn't know that was like acknowledged as perfect script. Good job. Bill Murray and everyone involved. Yeah, I think it's kind of like in the field of dream zone where the people who love it treat it like a religion. Yeah, I mean, I love it. It's a great movie. I didn't know who it was acknowledged as perfect.

But okay, good to know. Number two, I'm curious, like, since we're talking quar movies and all we have is Quar movies, like, what is your ideal? Is it more the kind of like variation on a theme with like a little bit too much emotional verite from Hulu? Is it the pump them out with really charming women a la Netflix with like Always Do My Maybe and something, someone great and the one based on Grantland, um, set it up. Or is it the sort of more like HBO style

Couldn't really find a home in the movie theater Also not quite right for like cable Like I'll kind of like a bad teacher Which is just like their most recent one But like in general I feel like HBO movies Try to like comment on something that we all recognize from society Because I think those are kind of like the three mainstreams Of like your streaming movie that you get right now

And I think it says a lot about like what you're interested in watching. There's also. incredibly expensive action movie that has nowhere else to be released right now. That's probably my preference. Coming later this week, right? Yeah. Jason, what do you think of that? Um, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this. I think for me, it's just, it's simply, um, can you give me solid B level entertainment at above? Even, even solid C plus level entertainment. You're sitting in your home, lucky enough to be able to work from home, I've just got every, like, video under the sun that has ever been released and then digitized available at my favorite. I'm watching the MTV's the

challenge seasons right now. I've been binging Survivor. Like, can you pull me away from that with a good story with some stars that I like looking at and, and a plot that will keep me guessing all the way through it? That's all I'm looking for. And it doesn't, I don't, I don't, care what genre it is. Action movie, great. Rom-com good. Comedy, yes. Yeah, I think for me, it's probably, I just can't dread watching it. No matter how good it is, I think that there's been some stuff that's come out over the last few months that I've really liked that I still kind of like actively am like, dragging my feet to this one. And then there's the stuff where I'm just like, it's a pleasure. It's an absolute pleasure to watch this. So yeah, I think this,

that's why Palm Springs kind of like hit the sweet spot for me. It was. that like you could watch it very actively and try and figure out the loops and the rules of it, or you could just let it like kind of wash over you and just be like, what a fun date movie. Julia, any final notes? I think this movie doesn't get made if it's not in Palm Springs. Like I feel like everyone's just like, yeah, I'll do three weeks of Palm Springs. Sure. What are some, what are the, what's like the last possible place you could have done a movie that you think you could have gotten people to commit to doing this?

Oh, interesting. That would have been a realistic wedding destination? Like, would they have been able to. do cat skills? I'm going to go with no. I just feel like there's too much of a possibility for delays. I feel like Palm Springs is good because they could just assume the weather

would be the same every day. But it's also isolated because you can't do Central Park because if you do like the city, people could run around the city telling everybody like, hey, I'm stuck in a time loop, you know? I mean, nothing says time loop to me like Palm Springs. It's fucking sunny and dry and hot and boring

every single day. Well, Jason and I liked it a little bit more. Jason, final notes on this one? Yeah, let's get some Nana theories quickly out here. Do we believe that she is also a loop traveler because of that very cryptic statement towards the end of the movie where she's like, I guess you'll be leaving now? Or is she some version of Sarah who has been thrown out into the multiverse and then came back to this wedding as an older woman? What do we think is going on with her? I'm going the former because I think that theoretically that cave is not just for that wedding. So theoretically like other people, others could have gotten trapped. Maybe not in

that day. Maybe they figured out certain things about travel, but not how to get out with the goat exploding. So I'm going to go fellow traveler. Juliet? I'm going to go with the latter. I think that she figured out how to get out of the loop and she is now sort of like the wise sage who sees what's happening and doesn't want to intercede, but she sees the floor. Gotcha. Okay. All right, guys, I think we broke it down from every possible angle. Thanks for listening to TV concierge for Jason and Juliet. This is Penn Palm Springs. You can listen to what can watch it on Hulu now. Mother's Day has a way of sneaking up on you. But when it does, 1,800 flowers makes it easy to send mom something beautiful, thoughtful, and worthy of everything she does. Right now, with double blooms from

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