Caddyshack started out as a National Lampoon's Animal House-like movie. Caddyshack has so many classic scenes like the pool scenes, the "hey everybody we're all gonna get laid" scene, and the gopher.Harold Ramis made his directorial debut also co-writing the film with Brian Doyle-Murray (Bill Murray's older brother) and with Douglas Kenney. Harold Ramis and Douglas Kenney both were writers for National Lampoon's Animal House. They had based the character of Danny Noonan and his family on the famous Murray family, and when creating the character Ty Webb, they had one person in mind for the job and they also semi-based it off him Chevy Chase. The movie at the time was the movie with the most crude humor, but that humor is now part of cinematic history along with Cindy Morgan who played "the hot chick" That every guy wants. Caddyshack established Rodney Dangerfield's acting career as before he did some stand-up comedy. But over the years people still remember his quote, "Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?" As he played Al Czervik whose the obnoxious but lovable newcomer to the club. Bill Murray also largely contributed to the movie as the infamous Carl Spuckler, who in the sub-plot of the movie, is ordered by his Scottish boss to kill all the gopher's on the golf course. Bill Murray's character will make you start laughing from the beginning. Michael O'Keefe star's as the young Danny Noonan who is a teenager planing to go to college but can't afford it and is a caddie at the country club.

I've watched this film at least twice a year for a quarter of a century, and the last time I watched it, I realized something: this film is an anomaly. It shouldn't exist as a classic of comedic cinema yet, against all odds, it does. The story is pretty unimportant and there is almost nothing in the way of cogent plot or character development. Furthermore, it objectively fails as pretty much any formulaic type of comedy film. It fails as a romantic comedy, it fails as a coming of age story, and it fails as a class comedy despite its tagline of "the snobs against the slobs". However, like a McDonald's cheeseburger, it's greater than the sum of its parts. Taken individually, their ingredients are awful. But when you put them together, I don't know, it just works. I'm of the opinion that the reason that it remains a classic, and that countless golfers across the world chant "na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na- na-na-na" as they putt, is squarely on the shoulders of the brilliant performances of the cast. 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. And with the help of the great Harold Ramis behind the camera, they raise these characters that should've been easily forgotten to some of the most quoted in the history of comedy. It shouldn't have worked, but it did. This film is not for everyone. If you aren't tickled by these performances, then there's very little to hold your interest. And I get that. But that's the way comedy works. It either hits you or it doesn't. And this film still makes me laugh out loud every single time. And I imagine that it probably always will.

Halfway through my first viewing of Caddyshack—despite how much I was laughing—I wondered aloud, "What is this movie even about?" Then I realized that Caddyshack doesn't know either. Director Harold Rammis walked onto the set of this film with a fragile script that was trampled by his star comedians—leaving us with this disjointed but entertaining mess that's become a classic.Caddyshack opens with a hint of a story: Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe) is a lanky teen who wants to save up for law school but makes pennies caddying at a fancy golf club. So, Danny tries cozying up to one of the club's wealthy patrons in a bid to win a scholarship. Oh, but before that can move forward, let's talk about the groundskeeper (Bill Murray) who's hellbent on killing a wily gopher! Oh, and the master golfer (Chevy Chase) whose humility hides his talent! And Danny's girlfriend (Sarah Holcomb) who's inexplicably Irish—and the rich bombshell niece (Cindy Morgan) who wedges her slender body into everyone's love lives—and Rodney Dangerfield who basically does a bit in every scene!This all would be enticing if any of it intersected meaningfully, but Caddyshack only ever allows these characters to impact one another's lives at the very end—and even that set-up feels improvised. There are no stakes involved, no dramatic tension (which, believe it or not, is essential even in a comedy). All of these characters crowd the film and eat up its running time, leaving Danny's paper-thin plot as an afterthought. Murray is perhaps the only actor who really gets into his role and grounds it in the film's world, playing a filthy moron that no one particularly enjoys talking to who fumbles his attempts to rid the course of a destructive pest. But it's not Murray's film, nor is it Chase's or Dangerfield's. It belongs to no one.As funny as it was, I was disappointed with the aimless direction of Caddyshack. It's a movie with hilarious moments rather a good comedy. You'll watch, quote, and revisit portions of Caddyshack for the wit and bombast of Dangerfield, Murray, and Chase—but hardly ever for the situations surrounding them.

Just a few lines about a great, funny, sunny movie that makes me laugh every single time I see it. I think Harold Ramis' Caddyshack works like a big, joyous block party. You can't help but like every single character, every moment of crude and lewd, right down to Brian Doyle-Murray telling a caddie to "Pick up that blood!"I think Caddyshack's peer, John Landis' Animal House is a funnier movie because of the chances it takes spearing sacred cows, but Caddyshack may be the smoother-frothier?-film because it avoids lagging at the start of the third reel, something that Landis throws in to build up steam for his big, obnoxious cherry-bomb-in-the- toilet ending. Caddyshack just ambles along, all big-heart and Lacy Underalls. Animal House is, at its core, something serious. There's an edge to the humor and to the end-of-Camelot story. I wrote a long review of AH some years ago. The boys and girls at Faber College ("Knowledge is Good!") are about to smacked upside the head by the hideous specter of Vietnam. It's their last moments of freedom before the history arrives unannounced.Both have that feel of reading something hysterically funny in National Lampoon, and danged if it doesn't feel as if everyone is working his or her butt off to come up with a really good, really funny work of renegade art. What I've noticed about Caddyshack is that the power of Bill Murray ad-libbing his way through his duties as an assistant groundskeeper has, for the better part of forty years, provided inspiration for Caddyshackers to twist their mouths into a Joe Walsh mumble and utter the victorious cry, "It's in the hole!"It's what cultures are built on . . . I think.