New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Okay, I may be overstating things a little. Just stay with me. That's all I ask.

Danny gets his shot at college when he becomes caddy for Judge Elihu Smails (Ted Knight), a powerful man who is co-founder of Bushwood. Smails holds the purse strings to a prestigious caddy scholarship and thanks to a little hard work and a lot of ass kissing, Danny finds himself the front runner. All he has to do is stay in Smails' favor and keep his hands off the Good Judge's niece, the incredibly sexy and aptly named Lacy Underall (Cindy Morgan, looking a hell of a lot better than she did in Tron). Lacy is something or a cross between Phoebe Cates from Fast Times and Michelle Pfeiffer from Scarface. The character's only purpose is to...well, you know why she's there.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Bushwood's gopher problem is the direct result of the Czervik Construction Company's nearby activity. And the owner, Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield, also playing himself) is an obnoxious, slovenly self made millionaire who has been hanging around the club throwing his money (and his mouth) around - much to the chagrin of Smails. Eighteen holes aren't quite enough space for two men and their egos, so they agree to a mano a mano golf-off to the tune of $20,000.

It's hard to throw a guy out of your country club when he's got more money than you do and you both happen to suck at golf. Smails begins to assemble a crack team of golfing Terminators, forcing Danny and Ty to take sides. Will they join the snobs, or will they join the slobs? Danny's future education is at stake, and while Ty does seem to be impossibly rich, he also seems as comfortable with Czervik and his Technicolor wardrobe as he does with people who have a Porsche for every day of the week. At the same time, Carl seems to have met his match with the gopher, and his private little war provides the movie with a slowly escalating backdrop of glorious wanton violence.

And that, in a nutshell, would be your story.

Or, it would be if Caddyshack were not also a freewheeling, occasionally frustrating mash up of tenuously related subplots, lovably eccentric minor characters (Doctor Beeper = Priceless) and sophomoric hijinks. It more or less works out, but only in the purely abstract way that things do for a guy like Ty Webb. It's easy to be smug and self assured when you're independently wealthy and there's nobody around to say you can't spend all day on the golf course sucking down highballs and chasing women. Or to put it another way, life is good when you're the offspring of Harold Ramis and you've got Bill Murray, Chevy Chase and Rodney Dangerfield - all masters of comic improvisation and all at the height of their abilities - in your corner.

Must be nice.

And it is, when it works, which is...most of the time. The majority of dialogue spoken on film by Murray, Chase and Dangerfield was improvised on the fly and while it is generally funny, it does show. And it's particularly noticeable on successive viewings, or if you happen to have a practiced eye. You see, in much the way Happy Days was originally about Richie Cunningham before Arthur Fonzarelli took over, Caddyshack was originally a different movie until three guys in particular proved to be ad-lib comedy gold. But where the Fonz is literally what caused Happy Days to jump the shark, I think the change in focus worked out for the best with Caddyshack. However the downside is that the movie has a choppy, uneven feel that often makes it seem more like a series of strung together sight gags and lazy puns than an actual film. It's a considerable trade off, albeit a worthwhile one, for the most part.

Continued:       1       2       3