Year: 1980
Runtime: 98 min
Director: Harold Ramis
Starring: Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Ted Knight, Rodney Dangerfield, Michael O’Keefe, Cindy Morgan, Sarah Holcomb.
I am a golfer. Eh, actually it sounds a bit pretentious to say that. What I mean is that I go out to a very nice course and pay the very nice people who own said course money to swipe at a little sphere with a stick until it eventually falls into a hole. This can take a very long time.
I am not a good golfer, is what I am getting at.
And neither are the actors in Caddyshack, though the magic of movies will convince us they are PGA Tour potential.
This sports comedy feels like it belongs in a Saturday Night Live skit, and with good cause, as it stars Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, and was written by National Lampoon co-founder Douglas Kenney before he died, along with Murray’s brother Brian-Doyle Murray and director Harold Ramis. So the movie definitely has the pedigree you would want for a hilarious comedy, unfortunately it lacks the energy from first-time director Ramis that it really needed to stand out.
The plot, thin as it is, has two main threads to follow. The first being Michael O’Keefe’s young caddy trying to win a college scholarship from the country club where he works, and the second following the PTSD afflicted groundskeeper played by Bill Murray who does comic battle with a hardy little gopher. Neither plot is particularly impressive, but they do an acceptable job of keeping the movie grounded.
And that’s maybe the movie’s biggest weakness.
The comedy seemed tempered to be just a little bit safe, a little less wild and over-the-top. It wants to exist in a real world, where real world rules apply, but the movie is at its best when it crosses the line into straight-up cartoon, like the incredible efforts from Murray to do away with that one particular animatronic rodent. Where the movie stumbles is in trying to portray these characters as anything more than caricatures. We’re supposed to care about O’Keefe’s Danny and his trials as he seeks to escape his hum-drum life, we are supposed to be invested in his relationship drama when he ends up seduced by the sexy young Cindy Morgan, who plays the niece of one of the club’s most esteemed members.
But we don’t care because it really isn’t interesting. And O’Keefe’s character is the only one to have any kind of arc whatsoever, limited though it is. Everyone else is just playing a two-dimensional cartoon character with zero motivation. Chevy Chase is the same charming yet smug jerk he spent decades perfecting (yeah, none of us think he’s acting), Bill Murray is suitably unhinged as the chaos-loving groundskeeper, and Rodney Dangerfield…well, I’m not sure Rodney knew he was in a movie, because every scene with him plays out just like one of his stand-up routines. And your enjoyment of the film will largely depend on your tolerance of these comic actors. I personally found myself wishing Dangerfield’s role had been drastically slimmed down, but then I’ve never been a big fan of his comedic style, and there are plenty of folks who won’t mind him in the least.
The jokes are hit and miss throughout, though when they hit they show a level of genius typically reserved for the comedy elite. Every scene with Murray is a delight, from a monologue where he narrates his own improbable success at the Masters while destroying some innocent flowers, to an impromptu bit of caddying for a priest in the middle of a rain storm, and finally to my favorite sequence in the entire film, a scene between him and Chase that is gloriously understated as the wealthy snob and the impoverished club employee meet thanks to an errant golf ball that lands in Murray’s little shack. This scene is wordplay comedy of the highest order, with a zaniness that would have been right at home with Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. It’s clear that Murray steals the show.
Though Chase gives him a run for his money. He has a number of great lines, particularly when the movie isn’t interested in propping him up as the greatest golfer, lover, and businessman of all time. His droll commentary on life makes for instantly quotable good times.
Heck, even Ted Knight, playing the stuffy Judge Smails, delivers a pretty solid performance as his composure continues to erode against setback after setback in his personal life.
When these actors are allowed to play to their strengths and be silly, the movie benefits. When they try to make us think they are real people, the movie comes up short.
The only downside to the excellent cast is that we don’t have any female characters who aren’t just background noise. Cindy Morgan is the most prominent, playing the sexy young niece of Judge Smails, but her role is largely relegated to eye candy for the male gaze of both O’Keefe and Chase, and that’s a shame because her rebellious anti-establishment character could have been a perfect addition to the main cast. The only other female role worth mentioning is Sarah Holcomb as O’Keefe’s Irish girlfriend, but she basically has two scenes in the finished product and serves no purpose other than to be a plot point for O’Keefe.
I’m of a split mind about Caddyshack. It has moments of brilliance and moments of bland. The core of the film doesn’t know whether it should embrace the crazy like a late night skit or temper down for a more believable, traditional movie flow. Personally, it could have used a little more crazy, especially when you’ve got a few meh scenes, such as a dull fancy dinner and a pool party segment that only serves to drag the proceedings out, though at least the punchline (featuring some candy bar contamination) in that scene is pretty funny.
But even if certain scenes fall flat, a lot of the ancillary features a movie should have are just excellent, including the fantastic soundtrack that will have you tapping your toes, and the cinematography, which looks especially good for a movie that needs so many exterior shots. They even make us think it really was shot in the midwest instead of Florida.
Sure, the storm effects and robot gopher look kinda bad, but they don’t ruin the overall look of the movie.
Is Caddyshack a good film? Yes, definitely. And any comedy fan would do well to schedule a tee time with its quirky regulars. But is it the classic that so many devoted club members insist? Well, I think it just falls short of an eagle when compared to its contemporaries. You take the genius that was The Blues Brothers that came out the month before, or even Airplane which came out the same month, and you can see some of the scuff marks on Caddyshack, but it’s still a pretty good time.
