Caddyshack (1980)

Unreconstructed fans of Chevy Chas, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight or Bill Murray might find something to guffaw at in this lamebrained movie that purports to be a satire on country club life but makes everybody look like slobs. Except - perhaps - a little Irish wench named Sarah Holcomb and the gopher who tears up the golf course. Should have put the gopher to work on the script. show more

Dangerfield is funniest, though, when the movie just lets him talk. He's a Henny Youngman clone, filled with one-liners and insults, and he's great at the country club's dinner dance, abusing everyone and making rude noises. Surveying the crowd from the bar, he uses lines that he has, in fact, stolen directly from his nightclub routine ("This steak still has the mark of the jockey's whip on it"). With his bizarre wardrobe and trick golf bag, he's a throwback to the Groucho Marx and W.C. Fields school of insult comedy; he has a vitality that the movie's younger comedians can't match, and they suffer in comparison. show more

Caddyshack has a low-budget look that warmly welcomes the all-important teenage audience. It looks like a film they could have made. And everyone associated with the film—in front of and behind the camera—is aware that he or she is making a frivolous film...That's why Rodney Dangerfield's cornball jokes and spritzing barbs are so perfectly right for the film. These are throwaway jokes for a most disposable motion picture, the kind of film that drive-ins were designed to play. show more