Finding a family-friendly movie to watch at home is a challenge when your 13-year-old daughter favors slapstick and your wife wants romantic comedy but you’re in the mood for something more existential. I floated the possibility of the two-disc Beckett on Film that Netflix had just delivered but settled for something more meaningful and absurd. Groundhog Day.

Actually, I had introduced Franny to the film this summer when we were vacationing in Amagansset but the DVD we rented out there was damaged and we only got halfway through Bill Murray’s endless day. Santa had brought her a fresh copy for Christmas and though I’ve seen it about a dozen times now, I found it had only improved with time. The time that stands still, of course.

I usually skip the extra features on DVDs but Peggy and I ended up watching a short entitled “The Weight of Time” afterwards, featuring interviews with director Harold Ramis, screenwriter Danny Rubin, Andie MacDowell and ubiquitous character actor Stephen Tobolowsky who plays insurance salesman Ned Ryerson. (You know: Needlenose Ned. Ned the Head. Bing!) Rubin confessed that Ramis had changed the order of the script — originally the audience met Murray’s obnoxious weatherman Phil Connors when he was in demigod mode, boasting of knowing the story of every single person in town — and made MacDowell more of a love interest.

The latter was an obvious move: without a girl to get it would be hard to care about Connor’s dilemma, continuously reliving the same day, but by following his transformation from arrogant asshole to selfless saint, catching kids falling from trees and fixing old ladies’ flats, Ramis did more than employ the character arc. He made Groundhog Day a story of enlightenment. He said he knew they were on to something when he started to get letters from Buddhists saying that he must be one of them, or Christians who said it was a parable of the Passion, and Hindus and Jews… I even saw it as a 12 step allegory: Connors, who lives only for himself, finds escape through service. It takes a while, of course. Rubin estimates Connors lives the same day in Punxsetawney for thousands of years.

“You are locked within your suffering and your pleasures are the seal,” Leonard Cohen sang. Ned Ryerson might add: “Watch out for that first step; it’s a doozy!”