June 04, 2013

CADDYSHACK II Gets Live-Tweeted, My Car Gets Fixed


"Think Mandingo!"
I woke up early Saturday morning to bring my car into the shop for some long delayed repairs.  The dealership is just far enough away that there's no easy way for me to go home while the work was being done, so I packed up my laptop and prepared for a morning screening.  I settled on Caddyshack II, which I attempted to watch on a plane a few weeks earlier only to be stymied by my outdated iPad.  As previously mentioned, I came to Caddyshack very late in life.  But when I did finally see it, the movie totally blew me away.  That said, I knew enough to avoid the sequel, solely on the basis that the only returning cast member was Chevy Chase and even he was barely in it.  But I had no idea just how awful it could really be.

Holy shit guys...

Caddyshack is one of those great late seventies/early eighties comedies full of incidental nudity and casual racism that is so indicative of that era and so hard to pull off today.  It's smart and edgy and, most importantly, fucking hilarious.  Caddyshack II is the opposite of all those things.  The first movie has a classic snobs-vs-slobs angle, pitting hardscrabble working class caddies against the wealthy blue-blood golfers at a crudely named country club.  The sequel seems determined to carry that torch, but without the burden of actual poor people.  Or caddies.  Or golfers.  Instead, the majority of the film's running time is focused on two millionaires trying to one up each other.  It's not so much rich vs. poor and as much as it's old money vs. new money.  And while Rodney Dangerfield was plenty of fun the first time around, he worked primarily because he was used in moderation.  Somehow Jackie Mason ended up as the hero of this movie, and while he actually gives a pretty charming performance, the wild shift in tone from the first movie to the second is just too much to overlook.

Seriously, it feels like this movie was conceived from a small child's naive impressions of the original.  It doesn't help that when Jackie Mason buys Bushwood, he essentially turns it into the world's largest miniature golf course, complete with Bugs Bunny cutouts on the fairway.

Also, the gopher talks now.  And he sounds exactly like Slimer from Ghostbusters.

I wish I were joking.

This is one movie that I'm glad I didn't stumble upon when I was a kid.  Chances are I would've ended up with much fonder memories than the film actually deserves.

At least I got my car fixed.

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If you haven't seen this movie, consider yourself lucky.

Run away.

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Title: Caddyshack II
Director: Allan Arkush
Starring: Jackie Mason, Robert Stack, Dyan Cannon, Jonathan Silverman, Jessica Lundy, Randy Quaid, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase
Year Of Release: 1988
Viewing Method: Netflix DVD (at the car dealership)






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