Caddyshack (1980)

Caddyshack (1980)

Directed by: Harold Ramis

Starring: Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray

Caddyshack is one of those ‘oldie but a goodie’ movies, and it almost justifies that MORONIC phrase existing. You’ll go by and not see it for years and completely forget everything about it, except maybe the candy bar in the pool scene or the gopher stuff, then when you watch it again, you realize it’s just chock full of funny stuff. Hell, Rodney Dangerfield is not only withstandable, he’s pretty damn funny. It’s also nice to see Chevy Chase play a subdued character who isn’t just falling down and hurting himself all over the place.

The plot of Caddyshack is that there’s this caddy who wants to get into college, but can’t pay for it, so he starts kissing the ass of Ted Knight for the prospects of getting a scholarship. Seriously, that’s the plot of this movie, though it gets about a half hour of screen time total. There’s also stuff about Dangerfield antagonizing Knight, Chase being philosophical (“Be the ball.” What, you thought that was a common phrase before this?), and our main character getting with different girls and some stupid drama involved there. Oh yeah, and Bill Murray is a retarded groundskeeper who’s after a meddling gopher with a vengeance. Linear, this is not.

But it doesn’t really matter, since you don’t watch an ensemble comedy for brilliant storytelling or anything. Mostly it’s about each of these people being funny in vaguely golf-related situations, and it does that exquisitely. If you haven’t seen it and you’ve just been pretending that you have to look cool in front of your friends (wow that’s happened more times than I thought possible. Why do people lie about what movies they’ve seen?), then just suck up the three dollar Blockbuster fee and see the damn movie. Just don’t, whatever you do, DON’T see Caddyshack 2. Dear god in heaven save us from Caddyshack 2.