Caddyshack

AMG Review

 Patrick Legare
The frustrating difficulty of golf makes it the perfect sport to spoof in a movie…and there’s no better one than Harold Ramis’ 1980 comedy classic Caddyshack. Featuring a plethora of comic superstars, Caddyshack is a virtual cavalcade of gags that range from inspired to twisted to sublimely gross. The cast includes Ted Knight as Bushwood Country Club’s anal-retentive owner, Rodney Dangerfield as a super-rich and super-obnoxious contractor, Chevy Chase as an excellent, but very quirky golfer, and Bill Murray as Bushwood’s assistant greenskeeper and resident nut-job. In a film loaded with improvised gags and dialogue, it’s the very scripted Dangerfield who steals every scene he’s in with his trademark barbs laying into Knight’s prim-and-proper Judge Smails with remorseless delight. The film’s biggest undoing is its lack of a foundation in the script: it can’t seem to figure out whether to focus on wry caddy Danny Noonan’s (Michael O’Keefe) quest for a scholarship or to stay with its quartet of comedy superstars. Fortunately, while many gag scenes fail to progress the plot, they are genuine gutbusters: Knight launching his putter into a restaurant full of senior citizens, Dangerfield hitting a drive directly into Knight’s groin (“I shoulda yelled two”), the “doody-in-the-pool” scene, or the splendid Fourth of July party that culminates in the Judge’s nephew guzzling a drink spiked with a cigarette butt. Caddyshack is crude and may lack the finesse and ingenious story of a more notorious comedy classic such as Some Like It Hot, but it has garnered a strong cult fanbase who would certainly argue it as being one of the funniest films ever made.