#38 Who's Your Caddy? (Wes)

Who’s Your Caddy

This list is bringing up a lot of movies I’ve never heard of before and this next movie was no exception. I could tell from the pun-tastic title that it was a golf movie, and probably a golf comedy (although on this list, that word has no meaning), but apart from that I knew nothing about it. Would I come to regret changing that fact? I hoped I wouldn’t, but we’re so far into this list now I knew it would be inevitable. So I decided to pose myself a different question. Would Who’s Your Caddy be the worst thing to ever happen to golf, or would John Daly’s fashion sense still hold that trophy? That question at least would make this a tough fight for Who’s Your Caddy to lose…

Hip hop star C-Note (Big Boi) wants to join the snooty golf club Carolina Pines Golf and Polo Club. When the clubs chairman Cummings (Jeffery Jones) makes it clear that he isn’t welcome, C-Note buys the property opposite the club, which contains the 17^th green on its land. Unfortunately for the club the rights for the land end on the day C-Note buys the property, and he shoots a hip hop video on it, refusing to allow the club the right to use the land until he is made a member. Reluctantly Cummings lets him and his entourage into the club, but is determined to kick him out as soon as he makes the slightest infraction of the rules. Will Cummings succeed in his plan? Or will C-Note and his friends beat this racist fuddy-duddy and shake up the golf club? Do I really need to be posing these questions? I mean it’s not like you can’t guess the ending just by hearing the slightest thing about it anyway, is it?

I recently read something along the lines of golf being a game where you win by playing the least amount of golf possible. To me this sums up the sheer pointlessness of the game. I had to play golf once for my brother’s stag weekend. It was at The Belfry, and I hated every minute of it. I had to wear a collared shirt on the course and my Dad kept trying to make me hurry as I was holding up other people behind us even though I could only whack the ball a short distance at a time. I thought the whole place was stuck up its own self important arse, and if it was anyone but my brothers stag weekend I would have politely declined the invitation in the first place. But as much as I hated playing golf, it was nothing compared to sitting through this movie.

If you read my Crossover review (see here), you’d know that of the very few sports movies that I actually like, two of them are actually golf based (Happy Gilmore and Caddyshack). I think a lot of this is due to how open golf is to mockery, so it can be a great setting for a comedy if it's handled with skill. With a history of not just racism, but of misogyny and class prejudice too, who doesn’t want to see it taken down several pegs.

Unfortunately director (and co-writer) Don Michael Hall seems to like Caddyshack too. So much so that he decided that writing his own movie seemed too much like hard work, so just decided to rip off the whole movie instead. Unfortunately this film suffers not just from being a badly written rip-off, but the stars are hardly the same comedy calibre of Rodney Dangerfield, Chevy Chase or Bill Murray. Hell, they couldn't out-act the gopher puppet, so even with a better script it would have paled in comparison.

The only person in this movie who had any form of comedy timing, was Bruce Bruce (as Golf Ball Eddie). Sure most of his jokes are based around his weight, but he’s the only person in this movie with a likeable personality. Big Boi just comes across as smug as a Tory frontbencher that’s just watched Soylent Green and has come up with a solution to save billions of pounds in pension payments and the rest of the cast are as forgettable as Ronald Reagan hosting a seminar on memory loss.

The biggest problem with this film is that nothing of interest happens in the slightest. You may as well actually be watching golf it’s that dull. The humour in this movie mostly consists of farts and nakedness. It actually makes Soul Plane (see here) look sophisticated. My first tweet during our live tweet-a-long (follow us here and here)  was “20 minutes in and I’ve thought of nothing funny to say. Which is strange as the writers of this movie had the same problem”. I could have easily changed that to 80 minutes.

So was this movie more atrocious than John Daly’s dress sense? Don’t be ridiculous. It was terrible. So terrible that I think even the Spanish Inquisition would think showing this movie was a step too far, but Daly often looks like he was dressed in the dark by a clown and then had his trousers vomited over by a unicorn. This movie could have possibly worked as a drama rather than a comedy (obviously with different actors though). Sure it would have likely been one of those movies that’s broadcast on daytime tv on a weekday, but anything would have been preferable to this unfunny Caddyshack clone. Happy Gilmore? Crappy Gilmore more like.

#38 Who's Your Caddy (2007) (Colin)

Cast: Big Boi, Mick Partridge, Falzon Love, Sherri Shepherd, Jeffrey Jones

Director: Don Michael Paul

Genre: Comedy

When I heard that the next movie on our list was a movie about golf, I was hoping it would be Adam Sandler’s hilarious and often quoted, (in my office at least), 1996 movie Happy Gilmore.  Yes you heard me right, an Adam Sandler movie I want to see and yes I do feel very dirty and will now go and have a shower with barbed wire and acid to get the stench out.

The other golf movie I thought this could be was Caddyshack, the brilliant and iconic 1980 movie starring Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and a superb performance from the late great Rodney Dangerfield, (whoa, did somebody step on a duck?).  I know this movie is not for everyone which would explain its entry onto our list, but alas dear reader, it is not.

The next movie on our list is ‘Who’s Your Caddy’ (2007) and the only thing I know about the movie is that it stars Jeffrey Jones, who played Dean Edward R. Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  So with at least one actor with comedy pedigree, surely this movie can’t be all that bad?  Well you’d think so, however, scores of 2/10 on IMDb, 6% on Rotten Tomatoes and 18% on Metacritic suggest otherwise.

So the question is, was this movie Caddyshack or Caddyshambles?

Carolina Pines Country Club is an exclusive golf club run by Richard Cummings, (Jeffrey Jones).  We begin the movie by finding out that even former US President, cigar lover and dress stainer, Bill Clinton, is about to be refused admission.  So when hip-hop ‘mega-star’, C-Note, (Big Boi), turns up with his crew demanding to be accepted, it’s no surprise he is also refused.

To get his own back, millionaire C-Note buys a strip of land which just so happens to cut into the golf course at the 17^th.  He tells Cummings that he will happily give the land back as long as he is given membership.  Cummings refuses but counter offers with millions of dollars instead, to which C-Note knocks back, (idiot!).

Cummings hires Shannon Williams, (Tamala Jones), who is a bright spark lawyer to resolve the stand-off.  She advises Cummings to allow C-Note to join and to wait patiently for him to screw up during his probation period and to revoke his membership once he breaks one of the many rules.

And so that is the plan and Cummings hires a photographer to record C-Notes actions to get him thrown out of the club, but by this point I am so bored with the movie that, to be frank, I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss if C-Note is allowed into the next scene, let alone this poxy club.

We are given some background crap about how C-Note’s father was working at the club and scored the lowest round ever, but that it was never officially recognised and actually this is the real reason C-Note wants to join the club and blah blah blah.  (This background story just feels like it was hastily put in at the last minute as they realised C-Note's character was more shallow than a puddle).

The movie crawls to it's boring finale with C-Note and Cummings deciding to have a golf match against each other, the winner of which takes control of the club........

So will C-Note be victorious and seize control of the club? Will the movie contain a single gag which will make you laugh?  Will I be able to sell my copy of Who’s The Caddy on ebay for 1p?

The answer to the last question is no, unless someone wants a cheap coaster for their coffee table.

It’s around this point of the blog that I normally give my opinion on aspects of the movie, however, this is really difficult as nothing happens for its 80 minutes duration!  They could have saved us time and misery by tweeting the movie as the plotline could be told in less than 144 characters: ‘It’s exactly like Caddyshack’.

Who’s The Caddy is just a blatant rip off of Caddyshack and whilst there was always going to be comparisons due to the fact they are both golfing comedy movies, the near identical storyline makes it impossible not to ignore the fact that Who’s The Caddy is unoriginal, a poor copy and is not fit to kiss the golf bag of Harold Ramis’s original classic.

Big Boi’s C-Note is Rodney Dangerfield’s, Al Czervik, but without the comedic timing, jokes, one-liners, warmth and charm.  When you look at it, Dangerfield’s character was actually an arrogant ‘baddie’ as he wanted to muscle in on the golf club and demolish it for re-development, but, for some reason, you grew to like him and really wanted him to succeed, (probably because you realise that actually, he does have a caring side hidden behind the brashness).  In comparison C-Note comes across as smug, cold and ruthless.  Not only do you feel sorry for Cummings having his nice little snob club interrupted, but you kind of wish he succeeded in his attempt to assassinate C-Note mid-way through the movie!

The humour of Caddyshack is one thing that Who’s Your Caddy did not bother to lift.  Instead of smart clever one-liners, we are treated to a series of farts and er, well that’s it.  Bottom bugles seem to be the only thing this movie can seem to offer to make you laugh and I’m now 38 and not 8 and this does not particularly have me rolling on the floor with laughter.  There are gags, (or so I’m told), within but they are told by the lazy clichéd black characters and get lost amongst the shouting, yo yo yo’s and hmm-hmms.  The only cliché missing was the neck shaking, finger clicking and a token aggressive black girlfriend, but I’m sure she’ll appear if, God forbid, there is a sequel.

The only surprise is the title of the movie, which to match the overall crudeness of the humour, I thought they would have called Caddyblack, but that would involve creating a half decent pun and the writers are no-where near this level of ability.

So was this Caddyshack or Caddyshambles? Well, I don’t think you really need me to answer that.  Who’s Your Caddy is one of the least funny, nothing movies we have had on our list so far and our list included Going Overboard!  Avoid this movie and do something more interesting like counting the grains of sand at your local beach, re-digging your garden with a teaspoon or re-painting your ceiling using a toothbrush.

At the end of the day, the world did not need a piss-poor pale imitation of the 80’s classic, Caddyshack.

Caddyshack II had already done that…….