Caddyshack

Plot synopsis:
Danny Noonan works as a caddy at the upscale Bushwood Country Club to earn enough money to go to college. Danny often caddies for Ty Webb, a suave and talented golfer and the son of one of Bushwood's co-founders. Danny decides to gain favor with Judge Elihu Smails, the country club's stodgy co-founder and director of the caddy scholarship program, by caddying for him. Meanwhile, Carl Spackler, one of the greenskeepers, is entrusted with combatting a potentially disastrous gopher infestation. He tries a variety of methods to kill the gopher (e.g. shooting, drowning) without success.
Al Czervik, a brash and obnoxious nouveau riche, begins appearing at the club. Smails is heckled by Czervik as he tees off, causing his shot to go badly wrong. Smails throws a putter away in frustration and accidentally injures a member of the club. Danny takes responsibility for the incident, as a ploy to gain Smails' trust. Smails encourages him to apply for the caddy scholarship.
At Bushwood's annual Fourth of July banquet, Danny and his girlfriend Maggie work as servers. Czervik continues to irritate Smails and the club members, while Danny becomes attracted to Lacey Underall, Smails' promiscuous niece. Danny wins the Caddy Day golf tournament and the scholarship, earning him praise from Smails and an invitation to attend the christening ceremony for his boat. The boat is sunk at the event after a collision with Czervik's larger boat. On returning, Smails discovers Lacey and Danny having a tryst at his house. Expecting to be fired or to have the scholarship revoked, Danny is surprised when Smails only demands that he keeps the incident secret.
Unable to bear the continued presence of the crude-mannered Czervik, Smails confronts him and announces that Czervik will never be granted membership. Czervik counters by announcing that he would never consider being a member: he insults the place and is merely there to evaluate buying Bushwood and developing the land into condominiums. After a brief scuffle and exchange of insults, Ty Webb suggests they discuss a resolution over drinks. After Smails demands satisfaction, Czervik proposes a team golf match with Smails and his regular golfing partner Dr. Beeper against Czervik and Webb. Against club rules, they also agree to a $20,000 wager, quickly doubled to $40,000, on the outcome of the match. That evening, Webb practices for the game against Smails and meets Carl, where the two share a bottle of wine and a joint.
The match is held the following day. Word spreads of the stakes involved and a crowd builds. During the game, Smails and Beeper take the lead, while Czervik, to his dismay, is "playing the worst game of his life". He reacts to Smails' taunts by impulsively redoubling the wager to $80,000 per team. When his own ricocheting ball strikes him, Czervik feigns injury in hopes of having the contest declared a draw. Lou, the course official who is acting as an umpire, tells Czervik his team will forfeit unless they find a substitute. When Webb chooses Danny, Smails threatens to revoke his scholarship, but Czervik promises Danny that he will make it "worth his while" if he wins. Danny eventually decides he would rather humiliate the selfish, conceited Smails than take the scholarship.
By the time they reach the final hole, the score is tied. At the climax of the game, with Danny about to attempt a difficult putt to win, Czervik again redoubles the wager to $160,000 per team. Danny's putt leaves the ball hanging over the edge of the hole. At that moment, Carl, in his latest attempt to kill the gopher, detonates a series of plastic explosives that he has rigged around the golf course. The explosion shakes the ground and causes the ball to drop into the hole, handing Danny, Webb, and Czervik the victory. Smails refuses to pay, so Czervik beckons two hulking men, named Moose and Rocco, to "help the judge find his checkbook." As Smails is chased around the course, Czervik leads another wild party attended by all of the onlookers at the match, shouting, "Hey everybody! We're all gonna get laid!" The gopher emerges, unharmed, and dances amid the smoldering ruins of the golf course.

Tags: comedy, cult, violence, absurd, humor, entertaining

Review:
`National Lampoon's Animal House' may have been one of the first comedies to evolve from the `Saturday Night Live' generation, but it could be argued that `Caddyshack,' directed by Harold Ramis-- and which features two SNL alumni, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray-- actually spawned the entire `SNL genre,' of films, because this is the one that seemed to lock in that formulaic irreverence toward all things, of which they are so indicative.
At the time of it's theatrical release, in 1980, it was fairly on the cutting edge of comedy; by today's standards, though, it doesn't seem nearly as irreverent, especially given the digressive trend in the genre lately, which has spewed forth such fare as `Freddy Got Fingered,' and `Road Trip.'  Then again, this one had Harold Ramis behind the camera, and Ramis has an acute sense of comedic timing, he knows what works, and he made the most of the basic screenplay (by Ramis, Brian Doyle-Murray and Douglas Kenney) and the terrific cast of comedians with which he had to work, all of whom fit so well into the pattern and fabric of this particular picture.Rarely does a comedy (or any film for that matter) have so many actors who fit their characters so perfectly as in this film, beginning with Chevy Chase, who embodies the slightly skewed and off-center Ty Webb so well it's almost frightening.
But if the existence of a Ty Webb type is only highly probable, there's no doubt whatsoever about the fact that there are guys like Al Czervik amongst us.Rodney Dangerfield plays Czervik, the obnoxious, fun-loving, high-rolling land developer with a specially made golf club and an eye on Bushwood.
It is, without question, the best character and performance of Dangerfield's cinematic career, and -- like Chase-- it's almost scary the way he fits into the character so naturally and completely.The real heart of this movie, however, is Bill Murray, who turns in what just may be the definitive Murray performance with his character, Carl Spackler, the Assistant Greenskeeper at Bushwood.
And he does it quite nicely.Also giving memorable performances are Ted Knight, as the rigid, conservative Judge, and Brian Doyle-Murray as Lou Loomis, who oversees the caddies at Bushwood.The supporting cast includes Sarah Holcomb (Maggie), Scott Colomby (Tony), Cindy Morgan (Lacey Underall), Dan Resin (Dr. Beeper), Henry Wilcoxon (The Bishop), Albert Salmi (Mr. Noonan), John F.
You get a Chevy Chase doing his ironic bit, you have one Bill Murray essaying a bizarre-o mental case, good old Ted Knight going into slow-burn histrionics every scene, and Rodney Dangerfield stealing every scene with large chunks of his stand-up act.
Instead, Ramis, Kenney and (Bill's brother) Brian Doyle Murray set each of these comedians up with sketch-like scenarios for some of their finest and funniest work.The movie is mean in all the right places - It's the snobs against the slobs, as the advertising says.
Unfortunately, the plotline of the caddies is overlooked by the outstanding performances by comedic stars such as Dangerfield, Murray, Chevy Chase, and Ted Knight.
There are about five different plots developing at once throughout the movie, the funniest of which is Carl Spackler's (having been licensed to kill by the 'Government of the United Nations') attempts to assassinate a rogue gopher tearing up the golf course.Each and every actor battles with each other, and it's hard to nail down exactly who runs away with the movie, but if I absolutely HAD to choose, I'd say that Rodney Dangerfield's sleazy, slobbish, overly-friendly, and gratuitously tipping character is the most wonderful thing about it.
He is the perfect foil for Judge Smails (an utterly perfectly-cast Ted Knight), a pompous, bad-tempered, self-important hypocrite who wants to reserve the pretentious Bushwood Country Club for snobs and gentlemen (despite being far from a gentleman himself).If you like comedy quotes, Caddyshack is a goldmine.
Some of the greatest comedic actors of that era, namely Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, and Chevy Chase, are firmly on their A Game here, and are absolutely sublime in this film.
Except that it applies not to the characters in the film, but to the writer and director, Harold Ramis.Caddyshack is a series of sketches that claim to be a movie, but are really far less than the sum of their parts.
There are a few good comedy bits  surprisingly, Chevy Chase is good in an understated way that is cumulatively funnier as time goes by  and Rodney Dangerfield brings the frenetic quality and smart-alecky trademark schtick up front and center that is occasionally pretty good.But the whole film never gets going.
Ramis does try the parody thing with a little incident in a swimming pool that references Jaws, but it takes five minutes to get through, and the joke has come and gone way before the punchline, which is then totally anticlimactic.Probably the best way and reason to watch Caddyshack, apart from ninja training to learn to overcome suffering silently, is as a perspective on Groundhog Day, which is the SECOND funniest movie in the last 40 years, and for reasons that are entirely due to its own genius.
It brings together three elements from Caddyshack: Ramis, again as writer producer; a groundhog; and Bill Murray, who, if you want to see evidence of progress of a great comedian, you need do no more than compare these two films, made 13 years apart.In Caddyshack, Murray is a kind of template for what Jim Carrey started out as: a Jerry Lewis style goof that get laughs from, well, people who think Jerry Lewis is a genius, and gags that depend on what one can only call a "retard" persona, which is not funny.
All three of these comedians managed to demonstrate at some point in their career that there was some brilliance and control in their comedy, and got way, way better results out of it: Murray in many films, especially Groundhog Day, Lost in Translation, and Broken Flowers; Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Truman Story and a few others; and Lewis in The King of Comedy  in its own way the THIRD funniest movie in the last 40 years.
But Smails has other concerns beside Czervik - a troublesome gopher continues to evade the best efforts of deranged grounds-keeper Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) while semi-pro Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) tries to teach young caddie Danny (Michael O'Keefe) a few lessons about life and love, possibly involving Smails' flightly niece Lacey Underall (Cindy Morgan)."Caddyshack" is a frustrating film in many respects.
The true stars are Murray and Chase and personally, they aren't in it enough for me to enjoy the film any more.I have other issues with it as well - the comedy only really works in fits and starts and the main characters in the plot don't engage you in the same way that Murray and Chase's do.
i love that guy, especially as Egon, and i loved his other movies like groundhog day and analyze this, and vacation and stripes were pretty good too, and of course ghostbusters 1 and 2, but his "early" films were really just banal fare for the 12-16 year old crowd who find potty jokes funny..
Rodney Dangerfield's "jokes" are so juvenile a five-year-old would cringe.The movie is so disjointed, it's as though they took five different films - all bad - mixed them in a Cuisinart, and then taped bits of the resulting mess together.
I usually think Bill Murray is funny, but there he was doing his usual dumb guy routine while Rodney Dangerfield was delivering those dumb jokes (which, by the way, I could actually feel the silence and humiliation you get after you say something stupid).
Although not a major box-office draw in 1980, "Caddyshack" is now ranked as one of the funniest sports movies ever made via magazine polls (it also has Tiger Woods' endorsement to boot), and yet it's full of withered fratboy humor, with a loosely-hinged, character-driven plot that could be summed up as "the slobs verses the snobs." Cocky young caddy at the Bushwood Country Club gets in with the nouveau riche swells in hopes of gaining a college scholarship, but soon rebels against the blowhard boors once he's invited to participate in a winners-take-all team golf match.
Best gopher, too.If you haven't seen "Caddyshack" and call yourself a connoisseur of this kind of film, you deserve to have Bill Murray practice for the Masters in your begonias.Nine stars.
My advice to anyone wanting a good laugh at a classy comedy movie is just sit down with a box set of Laurel & Hardy and watch how it should be done and not waste any time with this disaster..
First of all I consider myself a Bill Murray fan, I've enjoyed somewhat Chavy Chase and Roger Dangerfield's work, so the fact I had never watched Caddyshack until now was becoming a sense of guilt.
I can't make heads or tails of this film, I mean, it feels like it was made of different sketches with no solid or unified script,and full of wasted actors (Bill Murray is like useless) or plain bad acting (Chavy Chase), gratuitous nudity (ok, eighties comedy I know) and a terrible pacing.
Amusing and often times very funny story is set around a golf course with a bunch of untimly characters and gags this one is certainly a classic.
This movie is contains many laugh out loud situations due to our three great leads and even though some of the jokes may miss the target once in a while the film makers keep them coming at a steady pace so that the viewer never gets bored.
I think Ted Knight and Rodney Dangerfield steal the show which isn't easy in a movie with Bill Murray and Chevy Chase.
After watching this movie several times, however, it is Ted Knight who still gets the most laughs.
This is actually one of the funniest comedies I have ever watched,seemingly with no arty ambitions(which is quite a relief at times,especially when you feel low)at all and with plenty of "low" humor,presented with warmth and heart.The cast makes this movie(the script could have been a disaster in the wrong hands and with the wrong actors)a true pleasure to watch.We get to know a young caddy named Danny with high ambitions to raise money for college one way or the other,but the true highlight is Bill Murray's somewhat dopey/crazy green keeper who spends most of his time trying to eradicate chipmunks from the golf course,with the persistence of a madman.
The script claimed O'Keefe to be the main character; however he noticeably took a back seat to the slapstick comedic performances of Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, & Chevy Chase.
It was obvious that this film was a great success due to the improvisational skills of Knight, Murray, Dangerfield, and Chase.
The gopher is cheaply made, not even close to taking advantage of the special effects available at the time, but, even that seems to add to his charm.Rodney Dangerfield has one of his best performances in this film.
i had hear a lot about how great this movie is,over the years.so imagine my shock and disappointment to find out it's pure crap.i didn't find it funny,or amusing,or even entertaining.i swear i never even smiled once.i realise this is just my opinion of course,but i can't get over the high score (7.3/10)this movie has on this site.it boggles the mind.anyway,for whatever reason,i didn't think this was a good movie at all.in fact,it's brutal.there are some big comedy names of the era in this one,so you'd think that would count for something.but it doesn't seem to,at least in my opinion.i'm sure i'm in the minority,but my vote for Caddyshack is a dismal 1/10.
Add Saturday Night Live legends Chevy Chase and Bill Murray to the mix and the result is more than an hour of wise cracks and smart-ass remarks that roll off the tongue in a natural progression.Danny: "I was hoping to go to college but unfortunately it looks like my parents aren't going to be able to afford to send me" Judge Smails: "Well, the world needs ditch diggers too" The official movie soundtrack to Caddyshack compliments the film nicely.
Although uneven at times, two people really make this movie(three if you count Chuck E Rodent as Mr. Gopher)Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield.
It is a classic comedy with hilarious performances by Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield.Murray and Dangerfield lead an all-star cast, which includes Chevy Chase, Ted Knight, and Micheal O'Keefe.
With a classic hilarious ensemble cast that included unforgettable performances by the likes of Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield & Ted Knight, most at the peak of their performing careers, and with incredible leadership and writing from top notch guys like Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle-Murray, you gotta go with The Shack.
The great stand-alone scenes are too numerous to mention all of them, but include: - Murray as Carl the Groundskeeper, whacking the flower bed as he fantasized about winning the Masters - Dangerfield prancing into the pro shop with his Asian buddy, and telling him that the club is restricted, so "don't mention you're Jewish" - Chase "playing through" Murray's pad, and their sharing a joint, a "cannonball", and tremendous comedic timing - Dangerfield in the club restaurant, introducing himself around Knight's table, then taking over the dance floor as he flips a huge wad of cash to the band; "Hey, Ringo, you and the boys take some lessons" - Murray caddying for the priest near the end; "The good Lord would never interrupt the best game of my life!" as thunderstorms blast all around themIt just goes on and on and on....."And that's all she wrote!".
"Spalding, how many times have I told you about your language!" I died laughing throughout the whole movie at Ted Knight's jokes and Rodney Dangerfield's jokes who comes close in being the funniest character as the smart-ass goofy dress inventor.
If you want to have a good time and laugh real hard while watching a movie, go rent or buy Caddyshack.
Just finished watching this movie with my 16 year son, who was skeptical about it after seeing modern day screwball comedies like "Old School." He loved it.Unlike at least one other reviewer, I thought Chevy Chase was great through-out the movie.
With all the over the top comedy through-out the movie, it's easy to miss Chevy with Ted Knight and Rodney Dangerfield's over the top performances.
Chevy clearly has some of the best lines, delivered so off-the-cuff as to be easily missed.Bill Murray may be at his comedic best in this movie playing underplaying an over-the-top character with great effect.
I know that Ted Knight is best known for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", but I will always remember him as the snobbish judge here (I've actually never seen "TMTMS").As it is, the movie mainly focuses on caddy Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe), but for me he almost becomes a back issue to everyone's gags.
I lean to the Mark Twain school of thought on the game - "golf is a nice walk ruined." Needless to say, I did not love this movie.The best thing I can say about it is that Rodney Dangerfield is only part of an ensemble cast rather than the actual star.
And, to me, none of the characters, with the exception of Chevy Chase, and to SOME extent, Bill Murray, were all that likable or engaging (I DID think though that Bill Murray's ad-libbed scene about getting all horny and worked up over the old lady golfers was hilarious!) Again, an excellent example of one of the many ISOLATED bits that were indeed very funny in this film.I don't know; maybe I'm just over-thinking it and I should just sit back and enjoy it for what it is.
Chevy Chase was at the top of his game as zen golfer Ty Webb, Bill Murray was equally memorable as demented assistant greens-keeper Carl Spackler, the one and only Rodney Dangerfield basically played himself with predictably hilarious results and rounding it out was Ted Knight, who effortlessly oozed smarm.The storyline is rambling but that doesn't matter much.
This film has it all- from Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, & Rodney Dangerfield all providing great performances to Ted Knight in his best movie role as a straight man to Rodney.
Just remember the folks in this cast & some great classic comedy are what you watching this film for.
That's not to say it's unfunny over 20 years later, it's just a very different film with all of the actors either off the radar or making different types of movies entirely.The movie is basically a hastily thrown together script featuring improvisations from Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray, surrounded by actual professional actors doing their best to hold the scenes together.
Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Ted Knight, and Rodney Dangerfield highlight the stars of this film, which also boasts fine performances from the supporting players, notably Michael O'Keefe.
But what really turned this into a good movie was the role of Judge Smails played by Ted Knight.Knight was clearly the best performance in this film, and being able to hold that up against the fore mentioned comedy stars only makes his performance that much better.
But you also have to love Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and especially Rodney Dangerfield who deliver some great lines and performances.
This is the GREATEST golf movie of all time!!!This is one of Bill Murray's classics, and he's only a co-star to an All-star cast.
There are several classic comedies that, at the time of this writing, I've never seen, like Animal House, Groundhog Day, and, until yesterday, Caddyshack.
The only funny people in the movie are Chevy Chase and Rodney Dangerfield, and the latter only sporadically.