Don't let the premise fool you into thinking this is a rehash of Bill Murray's movie - this is a GREAT little story unto itself. It's closer to Office Space & Back to the Future than to Groundhog Day.

With a well-constructed plot & engaging characters, you can ignore the obvious writing & cinematography constraints of working on a TV budget. Watch for the pearls: Jeremy Piven & Marin Landau will sneak through with their organic performances if you're not paying attention. But everyone from the office dominatrix to the wiry assassin are well-developed; I even felt like "Mom" was part of the cast! So what IS the story about? A hard-working downtrodden everyday guy with a little tardiness problem. On the day that he FINALLY works up enough nerve to talk to the office cutie that he's had a crush on for longer than his mother can stand, she gets killed. And he has to watch it happen. ...again. And if he doesn't figure out what to say & do, he'll have to keep watching it. But the key is to figure out who ELSE is watching her, and why his interest in her has caused our hero to wake up Tuesday after Tuesday after Tuesday...

12:01 is definitely worth watching again, and again, and again, and...

This is a made-for-TV movie with all the earmarks of Hallmark. It is not cheesy just low-budget with actors that cross over between television and movies. Who can forget Martin Landau in "Space: 1999"?

See the original story in the book "Before...12:01...and After" by Richard Allen Lupoff (Author), George Barr (Illustrator) ISBN-13: 978-1878252234

You know the story before it starts. Time loop stories have been presented long before this and many after. However, if you missed this one you've missed a pretty good presentation with a time loop story that doesn't try to be too cutesy or too heavy.

Slob and sluff off Barry Thomas (Jonathan Silverman) finds himself the victim of time loop technology that is gone awry. At first, he finds this quite annoying. Soon he realizes he has a second chance to save the life of the one that he loves from afar, Lisa Fredericks (Helen Slater.)

The film is very short; so will he find time to grow a social consciousness get close to the girl find and fix the problem and so forth? Or is he destined to repeat his slovenly ways over the same day forever and ever and ever?