Film:  Groundhog Crossing

Studio:    Pennsylvania Tourism Office

Director:  Tom Carr

Principal actors: Robert Seymone (narrator)

Screening Date:  September 19, 2007 Kansas International Film Festival

Film length:  70 minutes

Rating:  unrated 

2 ½ Stars 

Reviewer:  Deborah Ground Buckner 

If the Geico cavemen commercials can become the basis for a television series, why can't the Groundhog have its own movie?  This must have been the logic of the Pennsylvania Tourism Office.  The result is Groundhog Crossing, a “buddy film” about the Punxsutawney groundhog and its shadow, those famous weather prognosticators who determine each February 2 whether spring is on the way or six more weeks of winter must be endured. 

The Pennsylvania Tourism Office began an advertising campaign in 2004 featuring an actor in a groundhog suit accompanied by the shadow, a similarly-suited actor but in a dark groundhog suit.  The ad campaign, which can be see at www.groundhogchase.com, featured the groundhog and its shadow in a series of action chase scenes, and garnered international interest.  This was followed by a second campaign involving the groundhog and shadow in a spoof of Stephen King's The Shining.  These may be found at www.groundhog202.com 

The third campaign, www.groundhogcrossing.com, has resulted in a series of vignettes being strung together into a feature-length film now making the festival circuit.  Feeling the guilt of causing six more weeks of winter year after year, the shadow leaves his home in Punxsutawney to seek a new life.  Concerned about his missing friend, the groundhog sets out in search of the shadow.  The groundhog finds the shadow in Tijuana, then begins to escort him home via Arizona.  The shadow becomes discouraged again and disappears, leading the groundhog to travel to Nevada and Las Vegas, “a town with an enormous wealth of nothing—not a place anyone looking for something would stop.”  On to Death Valley, the two are reunited again.  They continue to Oregon where, dressed as lumberjacks, they enter into a contest with two men to see who can chuck wood the fastest, recalling how much a woodchuck could chuck.  But as the narrator observes, they forgot the “if” part of the old rhyme 

The two continue on through Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Los Alamos, Texas, where they are mistaken for aliens, Kansas, where the shadow gets his fill of wheat, Kansas City, Missouri, so the groundhog can feast on barbecue, Marionville, Missouri, where the shadow becomes obsessed with white squirrels, to Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, and, ultimately, home to Pennsylvania.  The shadow realizes “cold winter will last but six more weeks—a true friendship will last a lifetime.” 

Narrator Robert Seymone's rich, deep voice evokes Morgan Freeman's narration of March of the Penguins.  It is clear he takes this project seriously, and that is what makes this film of two actors running around in groundhog suits entertaining.  If it makes a viewer give a special thought to Punxsutawney next February 2, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office will deem this project a success.