Phil uses the loop first for appetite, then for despair, then for craft: piano, ice sculpture, the old man, the boy falling from the tree. The film is a moral education disguised as a joke, and the joke stays funny because he is actually insufferable at the start. Rita is not a prize for self-improvement. She is the witness he cannot fool, which is why the last morning matters.

Watch it on a day when the house feels stuck. The theology is light and the practice is serious. You become good by doing the same right things when nobody is keeping score.