Retro Cinema – Caddyshack
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I have not seen “Caddyshack” since its initial release in 1980 – 30 years ago, gasp! – and I returned to the film with the nostalgic anticipation that one associates with school reunions. After all, favored comedy films from youth are the cinematic equivalent of childhood friends.
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But not unlike many school reunions, viewing “Caddyshack†anew offers both an affirmation and a contradiction to the warmth of long-held nostalgia. Yes, parts of the film were are uproariously funny as I recalled three decades ago. But parts of the film surprised me with their laziness, their meandering and their utter lack of inspiration. What might have been funny (or at least forgiveable) didn’t hold up today.
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Memory served me well with Rodney Dangerfield’s astonishing bull-in-a-china-shop performance as the slob real estate developer who barges into the posh country club environment with tacky clothing and tackier behavior. With popped-eye exuberance and an endless skein of one-liners and putdowns, Dangerfield was the ultimate life of the party, and his level of energy was never truly duplicated in any of his later starring films. Ditto Ted Knight (in a rare film role) as the pompous, exasperated object of Dangerfield’s assault. The two stars brought a broad, loud brand of old-style slapstick to “Caddyshack†that sold the film as a wild tackle to the funnybone.
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If Dangerfield and Knight represented old-school comedy, Bill Murray’s deranged groundskeeper represented (for the era) a new approach to comedy. His stream-of-consciousness monologues, with its detours into illogical notions (such as comparing a pesky gopher to the Vietcong), coupled with a deceptively slacker style, punctuated the manic atmosphere of “Caddyshack†with a subversive mischief. The cute puppet gopher being chased by the violent groundskeeper, of course, is an ideal foe for the decidedly non-cuddly Murray.
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But, sadly, there’s the rest of the film – which often seems to interfere with the fun established by Dangerfield, Knight and Murray. The fourth star of the film, Chevy Chase, seems curiously unfunny by contemporary standards. His low-energy style and unfocused characterization (a supposed Zen playboy who engages in occasional physical mishaps reminiscent of his SNL-era Gerald Ford) constantly brings the film to a stop, and his interactions with his co-stars lack spark and personality.
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Even worse is the film’s supposed core story, involving the goof-off teenage caddies at the country club golf course. Michael O’Keefe, in the nominal lynchpin role as the frisky caddy trying to seek a college scholarship, has such a weak screen presence that he rivals Chase for dull intrusiveness. The other caddies are given little to work with and merely take up space.
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Director Harold Ramis doesn’t help matters through his lethargic staging of several major slapstick sequences, such as Dangerfield tearing up a harbor in an out-of-control yacht and the rude caddies invading the country club’s swimming pool. The film’s climax, involving a golf duel, is completely monotonous, and even Murray’s dynamiting the course to remove a nemesis gopher doesn’t make the sequence work.
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I left this 30-years-later viewing of “Caddyshack†somewhat confused and depressed. Yes, there was enough strong comedy to make the revisit worthwhile. Yet the production was nowhere near the laugh-until-you-hurt joy I remembered three decades ago. Either my tastes changed drastically over the years, or perhaps the film wasn’t as special as I recalled. Or perhaps comedy films of a particular vintage are closer to soda than wine – rather than improving with age, their snap and fizzle grow flat with time.
About Phil Hall
Phil has written about cinema for the New York Times, New York Daily News, Hartford Courant, Wired Magazine, American Movie Classics Magazine, Tower Records Pulse! Magazine and the Organica Quarterly. He is the author of several books, including “Independent Film Distribution” and “The History of Independent Cinema.” Beyond film journalism, he is a former United Nations correspondent for Fairchild Broadcast News and a writer and editor for technology and financial publications.
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Ah, Lighten up Francis. Yeah, Caddyshack isn’t Citizen Kane.
dumb.
I watched this the other day and it was just as funny, if not funnier than any other time I've watched it. I think you are dead wrong on your comments about Chevy Chase too.