Directed by: Harold Ramis
Starring: Michael O' Keefe, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Cindy Morgan, Brian Doyle-Murray, Scott Colomby, Sarah Holcomb, Dan Resin
Caddyshack is a funny movie in search of direction. It has a threadbare plot and some of the characters and subplots seem dropped in from another movie. There is plenty of comic talent on both sides of the camera, with Michael O'Keefe as a stabilizing force as our hero, caddy Danny Noonan, who wants a scholarship and sucks up to the snobs who frequent the country club where he works.
Danny is more or less a straight man and a witness to the lunacy taking place at the club. Some of the nuts he encounters are head groundskeeper Carl Spackler (Murray), who obsesses over getting rid of the gophers who live under the course, sardonic golf pro Ty Webb (Chase), the apoplectic villain Judge Smails (Knight), and uncouth land developer Al Czervik (Dangerfield), who would love to buy the club and level it to make way for condos.
We have various forms of humor, some of it successful, competing for the same screen. There's gross-out humor, one-liners (courtesy of the energetic Dangerfield), dry wit, and then Murray's performance which is mostly improvised and is the weakest part of the movie. Most of Murray's duties involve long, dragging monologues as he tries to eradicate the varmints from the course. Caddyshack is frustrating because while it has a few brilliant comic moments, it plays like a series of unrelated comic vignettes instead of a full movie.
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