Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t current but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both an artform and an important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but these films in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the COVID situation, my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series.
The 1980 comedy “Caddyshack” isn’t your usual recommended movie, and that’s because it’s an unapologetic film for its own stupidity. The making of this film sounds as entertaining and messy as the film itself, but what you get is a movie whose cast is the who’s who of the upcoming decade of comedy all in the same place, that makes the movie worth it. The cast is made up of Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray, Ted Knight and a young Michael O Keefe. As well as these pros of 80s comedy, there’s also a main cast member who’s a literal puppet, the gopher who Bill Murray’s clueless groundskeeper is trying to kill. One of the co-writers is Bill Murray’s brother, Brian Doyle Murray, and it’s the first film directed by Harold Ramis, who would go on to be a legendary comedy director. Yet, you can tell, in his first film, he has no idea what he’s doing.
The film doesn’t quite work, yet somehow it still does, because when it does, it’s funny, really, really funny. Half the movie is a unfinished story about a young caddy (Michael O Keffe) who works ther wants to go to college, and the other workers who are as hapless, horny and irresponsible as he is. The other half of the movie is about Bill Murray as a groundkeeper trying to kill a gopher, Chevy Chase being a new agey golfer, and a rivalry between Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight’s characters.
At times, “Caddyshack” seems like two movies at once and neither really quite finish their stories, but it doesn’t really matter. When you finish laughing at the parts that work, you don’t care and it has staying power. There are so many internet memes rooted from this comedy way back in the 1980s, including the gopher dancing to the theme by Kenny Loggins, Rodney Dangerfield dancing to the boombox in his golf bag, Chevy Chase’s new age saying when he hits the ball, Bill Murray trying to put a hose in the ground, Michael O’ Keefe’s young caddy riding his bike to work, and Ted Knight making a face and saying his famous “Well, we are waiting” line. The characters are great, and memorable, and despite the movie being a messy story, the things that work, work so well, that it trumpets the rest of the film.
“Caddyshack”, in my opinion, is one of the funniest movies ever made, and it’s joyfully stupid and unashamed of it. Sometimes we all need that, and “Caddyshack” does stupid better than many movies that followed, by the likes of Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey, who try to follow that format. I think that’s because “Caddyshack” just goes for it, and doesn’t child it’s audience for enjoying the dumbness of the whole thing. If anything, that’s the strength of the film more than the actual film itself.
