Review: Caddyshack

I understand why Caddyshack was popular, and as someone who loves things from his youth which I admit are objectively bad, I understand why people still like it, but that doesn’t mean it’s any good. I’m not such a snob that I think that popularity and quality never coincide, but here they do not. And part of me wants to sigh and shake my head at what was popular and considered funny in the long ago time of 1980, but it’s not as though much has changed.

Part of the problem is that Caddyshack is really two movies. One is centered around Danny, a young caddy from a large family who wants to go to college and get a caddy scholarship to do that. He’s sort of seeing an Irish girl with a very strong accent who also works at the club and in the course of the film also manages to hook up with Lacey, who is, well, the movie sex symbol. Our hero has a rival in another caddy and the teens who caddy operate on their own. And the film starts out seemingly about them, but then they quickly falls by the wayside.

Because there’s also another film happening at the same time, because the stars of the film - Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight - take over. And it’s sort of about a loutish new money member (Dangerfield) and the old school WASP judge (Knight). And then off to the side is Chase who’s playing an old money member but who’s a guy who does his own thing. And Murray plays Carl, a possibly insane groundkeeper.

One of the early scenes features Murray seeming to jerk off to a group of female golfers, but of course he’s not. His behavior and his comments are creepy rather than funny. And it distracts because Murray is in excellent form in a role that he mostly improvised. His fairly bizarre conversation with Chase’s character. Murray’s narration to himself as he tees off knocking the heads of a row of flowers. His story of caddying for the Dalai Lama. It’s a bizarre performance and except for that initial scene it’s brilliant. But to watch it today, after that opening my heart just sank. The film may have recovered, but it took awhile because all I could think was, this is disgusting misogynist nonsense.

The movie alternates between these two films I mentioned, but it mostly focuses on the adults. To the point where I often found myself forgetting about the kids and how he wants to get a caddy scholarship. And his Irish girlfriend thinks she might be pregnant, but then turns out not to be. Of course her Irish accent is, well, let’s just say not great. And Danny is also sleeping with someone else. Which in a movie that focused a little more on him might have worked? It doesn’t really.

Meanwhile this is essentially Rodney Dangerfield’s movie as he completely dominates the scenes he’s in and the scenes he’s in essentially as the film. And I can take issue with some aspects of the performance, but through force of personality and just being funny, he takes over the movie. The movie clearly wasn’t supposed to be about him the way the final cut worked out to be, but it’s his movie.

And I’m not his biggest fan, but he’s funny. I do keep thinking that he was much funnier when he did his act in a suit than when he dressed like a slob. I was reminded of that when watching the film.

Then there’s the gopher. Which in truth is all I remember of the movie from seeing it on cable when I was young. The gopher is causing havoc to the golf course and Murray’s Carl is supposed to be taking care of it. And of course doing a poor job of it. And so out of other options, Carl preps a massive amount of explosives. Stranger is the gopher crawling through tunnels and making funny sounds. The gopher is almost a third movie on top of the other two I already mentioned.

The strangest thing about this movie, though, is the ending. Carl sets off the explosives, which means that a large portion of the golf course explodes. Danny’s ball, which was perched on the very edge of the cup, drops in, giving them the win in the big golf game. And then we cut to Dangerfield looking at the camera yelling “we’re all going to get laid!”

And that’s the end of the movie.

Well, then the gopher dances to a Kenny Loggins’ song over the credits. But it’s just a bizarre ending and I have no idea what they were thinking. This wasn’t a movie that requires a lot to wrap top, but it just ended so abruptly.

I kept thinking that the film suffered from being made by people who could write scenes but couldn’t write films. They could build characters but they couldn’t build plots. This was early in the career of a lot of the people and the first movie that Harold Ramis directed. It’s amusing. They’re funny people. There are a few great moments in it. But overall it just falls flat. Just a series of sketches and scenes strung together that are mostly set at a golf club. I know some people talk about it as one of the best films about golf, one of the best sports, one of the funniest films. I just don’t get it.