Caddyshack II.

Review #1300: Caddyshack II.

Cast: 
Jackie Mason (Jack Hartounian), Robert Stack (Chandler Young), Randy Quaid (Peter Blunt), Dan Aykroyd (Captain Tom Everett), Chevy Chase (Ty Webb), Jessica Lundy (Kate Hartounian), Dyan Cannon (Elizabeth Pearce), Jonathan Silverman (Harry), Dina Merrill (Cynthia Young), Marsha Warfield (Royette Tyler), and Brian McNamara (Todd Young) Directed by Allan Arkush.

Review: 
This film is awful. Are you really that surprised? How could anyone think that this would be a good idea, particularly after eight years and only one returning co-star from before? Is the fault of this cinematic waste really all at the feet of its producer trio (Neil Canton, Peter Guber, Jon Peters)? Oh sure, Harold Ramis returns to serve as writer (co-writing with Peter Torokvei), but it is evident very early that this is the product of re-writes that have warped its original draft into something out of the Four Horsemen of the Movie Apocalypse: Terrible direction, listless acting, miserable atmosphere, and awful execution. One could almost be impressed with how dumb this proves to be, if they didn't burst into flames first. Going from an R rating from the previous film to a PG rating (when PG-13 already had been introduced as a rating) is the first sin one could identify for this film, oddly enough. It sure is hard to believe how Arkush found himself on such a strange film, having started his film career with Roger Corman at New World Pictures with films such as Hollywood Boulevard (1976) that eventually led him to mainstream studio stuff like Heartbeeps (1981). Since this film, he has primarily served as director for TV shows and telefilms. At least one can say Arkush has just one awful standout in a string of several things to list for a career, where probably no one could have done much better with. Predictably, this film proved to be a financial failure, making just half of its $20 million budget back (while the previous one had made roughly six times its $6 million budget).

When it comes to acting, the biggest ugly duckling in a sea of ugly ducklings is losing Rodney Dangerfield to studio disputes (which is why Ramis decided to reluctantly come back to write the script), since he might have made this at least seem palpable. In his place is Mason, who actually had received good notices on stage and television (including a Tony Award for his one-man show The World According to Me alongside an Emmy Award after the film's release). If it sounds like I am trying to give slack, it really is more me trying to resist asking the best way to describe his performance when it comes to jokes: In what world is Jackie Mason a replacement for Rodney Dangerfield? Flashy dress styles can't make up for sluggish attempts at humor (with PG trappings, remember), and the story revolving around him isn't any better. It sure is interesting to see Stack in a terrible comedy sequel (insert reference to him not being in Airplane II here), but his wooden deadpan delivery here doesn't quite work out here, since it doesn't register as many laughs as before, sadly. Quaid, playing a crazed lawyer that obviously exists in cartoon world where threatening people and giving them wedgies in public, manages to come off as aggressively unfunny, owing in part because this film doesn't have any real clue what to do with him. The less said about Aykroyd and his silly voice for this character, the better. Oddly enough, Chase returns (for which he later said he regretted doing), looking much like a bored cat when dealing with such lame gags, although he technically is the highlight, since he draws an occasional laugh. You know, I actually thought to try and count the amount of time that he is on screen. The total ended up being around fourteen minutes, with a good chunk of it being after an hour has already passed. I then thought, why not just count the minutes for Quaid and Aykroyd as well? Quaid and Aykroyd show up for about 8-9 minutes each. Honestly, any of these three leave more of a lasting impression than Lundy, Silverman, Merrill, or McNamara do as the young leads. That's not to say that the caddies present in the previous film were comedy magnets, but at least one could follow Michael O'Keefe and his pursuits (golf and ladies, namely) without being completely lost in the all-star cast chokedown that this film spews down the throat for 98 minutes. After all, you can see the parallels between the Dangerfield-Knight-O'Keefe-Murray pairing from before and the Mason-Stack-Silverman-Aykroyd "quartet" here, for which each can't quite live up to even the lowest of expectations. For one thing, they barely share that much time on screen as a group, and the golf game at the end feels so thin in actual depth (complete with "wacky" golf course designs). If you can't care about what goes on, you might as well just stare at the bathroom wall for ninety eight minutes instead.

For all that can be said about the film not being funny, a bunch can also be said about the fact that the golf aspects are tremendously terrible. The first film may have had a few weird swings from its main actors, but at least one could actually believe they were playing golf. It was based off the experiences that Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle-Murray (both co-writers of the first film) had as caddies when they were growing up, but this film seems to treat golf like it is some sort of wacky piece of puddy that can be manipulated to do any odd thing, with golf trajectories that seem more in like with a cartoon than anything, right down to giving the gopher more to "say". Even the plot aspects involving the club are boring, where motivations seem thrown out on a whim. There will be nobody who can give this film a defending, unless producers count as impartial I guess. Mercy is a quality one really shouldn't have for dumb movies like this, but I present the fact that it perfectly belongs in the pantheon of movies like Troll 2 and Rollerball (2002). There are no real reasons to ever watch this film, unless one prefers comedy torture from films instead of bad standup routines, or if they have a death wish of the cinematic kind.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.