DVDs in Review

Caddyshack (Harold Ramis, 1980)

Title: Caddyshack (Harold Ramis, 1980)

Release date: June 14 2010

Certificate: 15

Format: Blu-ray

RRP: £17.99

Rating: 3/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

Time hasn’t been kind to ‘Caddyshack’. The once ‘classic’ comedy 30 years on now feels dated and too silly for its own good, but it’s still filled with many brilliant moments to warrant a revisit on Blu-ray for fans of its enviable cast – Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Ted Knight and Rodney Dangerfield.

Set in the unbelievably frantic world of country club golf, ‘Caddyshack’ suffers from having too many disparate, deranged characters to gel. Everyone seems to have a conflicting quirk and when coupled with some failed visual gags, it’s hard to find something sensible to latch on to while you laugh at the genuinely funny parts.

The majority of the action takes place on the golf course, charting the adventures of Danny (Michael O’Keefe) who makes some extra money working as a caddy for the debonair pro golfer Ty Webb (Chase) and the local judge (Knight) meanwhile an unhinged groundskeeper Carl Spackler (Murray) attempts to kill off some unruly gophers with rifles and explosives. And then a sleazy real-estate agent (Dangerfield) comes in and turns the game into even more of a farce.

There’s also some skinny dipping and some sex scenes thrown in for good measure, allowing ‘Caddyshack’ to grow to a teen comedy out of a predominantly old man’s game. Harold Ramis directs this collection of catastrophes with a forgivingly tame, but not particularly kinetic, hand.

Ramis lacks the energy and pace that he would go on to apply to his best film behind the camera, ‘Groundhog Day’, but here he wisely stops the film from becoming too explicit. The only trouble is that it’s too schizophrenic for its own good, distracting from the already wafer thin plot and not offering anything particularly compelling in return. ‘Caddyshack’, like a trip to the golf course, is an escape from real life. But at least it’s got Murray and Dangerfield firing on all cylinders.