Every movie lover has at least one or two glaring omissions from the catalogue of films they've seen. There are many classic films I've never seen. (All About Eve and 2001: A Space Odyssey come to mind.) But the "classic" that people were almost most surprised to learn I had never seen has always been Caddyshack. If ever the word classic deserved to be in quotation marks, it's in description of this movie. No one thinks this is a great movie and yet, it unmistakably holds a place in the cultural zeitgeist. It seems like everyone in the world can quote Bill Murray's Dalai Lama's speech or at least shout, "It's in the hole!"
I noticed it was on HBO the other night so, on a whim, I watched it. I was disappointed on just about every level. To be fair, I didn't have high expectations going in. There was a reason, after all, I had avoided it for this long. I assumed - correctly, as it turned out - that I had already seen all of the funny bits in some forum (Reruns? Youtube top ten lists?). It's like one of those movies where the trailer gives away all of the funniest parts and the rest is just filler.
So many scenes just aren't funny. It's hard to imagine they ever were. Big set pieces like the yacht scene and the explosion at the end just come off as loud and dumb. (Likewise, I've always found the parade at the ending to be the least funny sequence in Animal House. Bigger does not necessarily equal funnier: quite often it's the opposite.) Other scenes, like the fight between Noonan and the other kid, or pretty much any scene with the Irish girl, are essentially pointless.
Not counting the stuff I had already seen, there were exactly two parts of this movie that caused me to crack a smile. One was the bit about the Bishop who gets struck by lightning while golfing the best game of his life, with Bill Murray's character as his caddy. The background music from The Ten Commandments is the icing on the cake. It's a funny bit. The second is Rodney Dangerfield roasting everyone at the club in the funniest ways possible. "This is the worst looking hat I ever saw... Oh, it looks good on you, though." It's pure wish fulfillment: some day, I'd love to storm through one of my freshman classes spouting out one-liners left and right. I was always under the impression that Caddyshack was a Bill Murray movie, or maybe a Chevy Chase movie. But no, it's without a doubt a Rodney Dangerfield movie. That's essentially what Roger Ebert wrote in his original review, and he was right on.
I can imagine that if you find Chevy Chase funny, you're undoubtedly more likely to enjoy the movie. What I can't imagine is finding Chevy Chase funny. Sorry, not sorry. I have friends who love his movies - Fletch in particular - I just don't get it. Here he is at his most arrogant and smug. The movie clearly thinks he's the coolest and assumes we agree. But all I can think of is the crotchety jerk who got booted from the cast of Community for being generally terrible to everyone.
Speaking of casting, Caddyshack is an oddity in that it has a protagonist so forgettable that almost no one can remember his name or the name of the actor who played him. Incidentally, his name, which I just looked up on IMDB, is Danny Noonan, and he's played by Michael O'Keefe. There's nothing really wrong with O'Keefe's performance. The problem is that 1) he's a straight man surrounded by flamboyant comedy stars, and 2) the movie has so little in the way of plot that we really don't care much about what happens to him. The main plot, such as it is, concerns his attempts to win a scholarship for caddies by earning favor with a pompous judge.
The subplot about Bill Murray and the gophers is infinitely more memorable, but just so very dumb. There's also a subplot about the judge's niece. And another one about Rodney Dangerfield's character, a real estate developer, buying the club and the property it sits on. Whatever. Even the movie doesn't care what happens with these half-assed story strands: the point is very obviously the jokes.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a movie emphasizing jokes over plot. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Airplane, and Naked Gun all do it, and they're all hilarious. But if that's your approach, your jokes had better be funny. And so many of Caddyshack's just aren't. Or aren't any more.
But hey, at least I no longer have to deal with people's incredulous reactions when I tell them I've never seen it.
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| I'll concede that Bill Murphy vs. the Gopher is kind of amusing. |
