Caddyshack II (1988)

I loved the first Caddyshack so when I saw this movie for sale on DVD at the now-gone Liquidation World, I asked my grandma to buy it. I watched it all the way through and it felt like I was watching a movie that shouldn't exist in this universe. The only returning cast member was Chevy Chase reprising his role as Ty Webb.It felt like a movie that wasn't supposed to exist. I have no idea where grandma's DVD of this thing is now, probably in a box gathering dust in my grandpa's bedroom or god-knows-where after it was donated to Salvation Army.

Caddyshack 2 is a study in god awful sequels. Along with Blues Brothers 2000 and Beverly Hills Cop III, CS2 is in the trinity of terrible sequels to 80's comedy classics.The basic plot of CS2 is the same as the first: a vaguely ethnic new-money guy crashes the WASP-y Bushwood Country Club. There are subplots about a groundskeeper and a gopher and young people learning to stand on principle, and it all climaxes in a golf match. But the original Caddyshack felt like a raunchy celebrity roast; the sequel feels like a lame afterschool special. CS2 was rated PG while the original was rated R. This highlights sequel kiss-of-death # 1: the studio wanted it to appeal to a wider audience (read: something for the kiddies). No part of the first Caddyshack is for kids; even the Gopher is more like a good acid trip (does anyone else see that dancing gopher?) – than a family friendly puppet. CS promoted sex and drugs and a contempt for authority. That's because it was directed and headlined by comedians who also promoted sex and drugs and a general contempt for authority. But the studio wanted a family accessible sequel since the PG rating is generally seen in Hollywood as better for box office returns. And so there are literally Looney Toons cartoon characters in Caddy Shack 2. Instead of Rodney Dangerfield's hilariously profane Al Czervik, we get a cornball Jackie Mason as a developer-with-a-heart-of-gold. Instead of the class warfare middle finger of Caddyshack, CS2 brings a saccharine "Up-With-People" message about self-acceptance. Bill Murray's brilliant comedic menace as the burned out Carl the Groundskeeper, is replaced by a grating Dan Aykroyd. Aykroyd is best as the straight man (Elwood Blues on SNL, Joe Friday, Louis Winthorp ). When he goes for zany like he does in CS2 he is like the unhip but well-meaning uncle at a family gathering who likes to do funny voices for the tots but then uses the same shtick when coming over to talk to the adults. CS2's second sequel kiss-of-death is the lazy attempt to recycle the original film. Even though Chevy Chase was the only original cast member to return, CS2 limply retreads most of Caddyshack's other character types. Robert Stack is no Ted Knight and Jonathan Silverman is too bland to fill Michael O'Keefe's shoes in the Danny Noonan role.Coming back as Ty Webb, Chase's one stab at edginess in CS2 is a bizarre and unnecessary scene in which he chases off a table full of attractive women in the club's lounge by propositioning each of them with silly euphemisms for sex. The joke falls woefully flat and is out of character with the charming Ty of the original. The third sequel kiss-of-death plaguing CS2 is its troubled development history. Harold Ramis, who co-wrote and directed the original, was reluctantly coerced into scripting a sequel. Rodney Dangerfield initially pushed hard for a sequel, but later pulled out over creative differences with the studio. Ramis also dropped out and urged the studio to let the sequel die. Instead the studio brought in other writers and director Allan Arkush who had more experience with TV than big screen filmmaking, (which may explain why CS2 feels like a made-for-TV project). Other than Chase, none of the original cast wanted anything to do with the sequel. Lawsuits popped up over the use of characters and unfulfilled contracts. All indications were that CS2 was a project that should have been terminated in early development but, as is the case with many Hollywood disasters, the suits saw dollar signs and ignored the warnings of the creatives. Caddyshack 2 is simply unacceptable. It's only redeeming value is as a cautionary tale for future filmmakers and studio execs about how to kill a comedy classic's name by attaching an abominable sequel to it.

This movie is a blatant attack at high society. It is a very left wing movie at attacks the conservative, prejudice ideas of the rich. The movie is based around a building developer of mixed origin who is building a low cost apartment block in a very upper class district of an unnamed city. The residents resent this because they do not what lower class people living among them so they push for an injunction, based on a historical horse shed which is only seventy years old, to have the development stopped.The daughter of the developer is the member of a country club in the area that is also frequented by the upper class people of the area. She is welcomed among them, but her father does not like these people. Instead he prefers to play poker with the builders and loose so that they might have extra money to take home. He was one of the proletariat who though a lot of hard work managed to become incredibly wealthy, yet he still considers himself one of the proletariat. He does not hoard his money, but is rather willing to loose it.He is contrasted with the rest of the country club. It is a community of people with a lot of money. They are portrayed as the bad guys. They do not want the poor living in their area and will do anything to stop it. They hoard their money and this is seen with the slave auction where $5000 was raised for charity the previous year even though a lot more could have been made. The quote is that the slave auction is held when they feel guilty about the amount of money that they have, yet they are not willing to let go of it. The developer does not consider his money as his security blanket and thus is able to let go of over $110,000 to purchase all of the people. He then puts them to work on the building site: which shows their incompetance when it actually comes to hard work. Stack's comment about not know what work really is like is contrasted with this scene where he simply bumbles everywhere. He claims to know real hard work, but the workers on the building site are true workers. He simply lounges in his exclusive country club.Robert Stack reminds me of Troy McClure from the Simpsons. It is hard to imagine him in anything else other than Unsolved Mysteries (the US version of Australia's Most Wanted, except they also focus on the supernatural). It is funny seeing him playing a role in a movie, and even then it is one of the rich bad guy.It is interesting though to wonder if the makers of this movie really to consider the rich to be like this and are more like the developer, or if they live this way yet criticise the rich for living like that. It makes one wonder if the filmmakers of Caddyshack II are in fact hypocrits or not.

Caddyshack 2 has a dreadful reputation, due only to the fact that it is a sequel to a highly-held classic. People have criticised the film on a lot of grounds, but they all ultimately hark back to the fact that this is not Caddyshack.I would begin by saying that we should just take Caddyshack out of the equation and consider this film on its own merits, but I think that would be unfair. The movie does have a lot in common with its predecessor. The class-related themes of 'snobs versus slobs' and the desire to fit in to a class above your own are as prevalent here as they were in the first movie. The two things that are truly lacking here are Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield, who are replaced with Dan Ackroyd and Jackie Mason respectively.Now I am not about to try and argue that Ackroyd comes close to Murray in the movie, but Jackie Mason is an admirable successor to Dangerfield. He comes off as a cross between Dangerfield and Arnold Stang, but without biting too heavily on either. I wouldn't say that he is anywhere close to being as funny as Dangerfield is in Caddyshack, but there is a whole lot more point to his character and his dilemma in the film.Chevy Chase only pops up and handful of times in the movie, which is another common complaint. Maybe these particular naysayers didn't notice that he only popped up a few times in the first movie. For my money, his scenes here are a lot funnier, if somewhat over-directed.While I'm on the subject, it is really the over-direction of this movie that brings it down. It comes across as far more self-conscious in its attempts to get a laugh. Many of the jokes are laboured and there's far too much of the Gopher, who seems to have taken on a far more anthropomorphic personality and a voice, just in case we didn't grasp the idea that its meant to be funny.Characters are similarly hammered home, particularly the smarmy yuppy kids. Jackie Mason rarely misses a beat, and is consistently likable and very funny, but we didn't need the tango sequence at all! The director is clearly not of the same school of thought as Harold Ramis. Not to suggest that Caddyshack was subtle, but the jokes here are just a little overcooked, and most of them are unnecessarily embellished with a quirky music cue.All things considered, this is a fun, goofy movie with something to say about class and identity that very few movies at the time were saying. Don't be put off by the appallingly low rating on IMDb, check it out for yourself.