Good, but no classic

Rating: 7/10 (12 November 2002)

It's funny how it works out. When the Brits come up with a story about class conflict and the virtues of staying true to oneself, they come up with "Great Expectations." Instead, we come up with this.
I like "Caddyshack," sometimes quite a bit. But I don't love it, and that puts me in the minority. It's a film that has improved with age, not so much because the years have revealed hidden layers but because its fans tend to amplify every minor joke in it to the point of a cultural touchstone. A writer at ESPN.com, The Sports Guy, has a Mecca-like attraction to the film, and actually excerpted a series of "Caddyshack" quotes to help preview the NFL 2002 season. And made it into a two-parter, to boot. I love the Sports Guy; I just wish the film bothered to displaythat same level of ingeniousness.
Part of my problem is I'm rooting too much for Ted Knight, even though I know I'm not supposed to. Everyone else acts so reflexively cynical, but Judge Smails has an endearing innocence about him. Just check out that way he laughs. When he holes that putt with Billy Baru, I just want to leap out of my seat and holler, until I realize what happens next. Knight's performance is great because he lets you in.
Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield are good, and that's all. They have funny lines, and fun characters, but either they or the script kind of leave them in neutral much of the time. Dangerfield's Czervik kind of grates, while Murray's Carl Spackler just makes me think of Brian Wilson after a while, and his failure to interact with anyone else in the case kind of leaves him lost in space.
I like Chevy Chase in this movie, more than a little. This and "Funny Farm" were the only two films of his I've seen where he bothered to actually play a character, and Ty Webb is an interesting one. Of the privileged class yet endearingly an outsider, Ty seems entangled by his circumstances (the writer didn't pull his name out of a phone book), and wanting something more, something real, something he knows is not his to get: "Danny, I'm a vegg." The way he looks at Cindy Morgan's Lacey Underall and says "Let's pretend for a moment we're two real human beings," is almost heartbreaking when you really notice it. On the pure funny side, well, you have his putting ("na-na-na-na") and his evening drop-by at Carl's bachelor pad. Plus he gets all the best lines ("That's what they said about Son of Sam.")
But there's so much dead space in this one, too much gratuitious nonsense. The whole Danny Noonan thing is wasted, and it's only the main plot. His girlfriend's annoying, Brian Doyle-Murray should have stayed behind the typewriter, and the whole slobs-vs-snobs thing feels too tacked on and manipulatively rigged. When the caddies crash the pool, you are supposed to root for them, and want to, but they are just too obnoxious. People who love "Caddyshack," absolutely love it, are the same kind of people who think it's funny to stick their chewing gum in someone else's catheter.
Anyone else notice the horn on Al Czervik's boat makes the same sound as the one in his car?