Caddyshack (1980) and Caddyshack II (1988)

“Caddyshack” well may have been the first “R”-rated movie I ever saw, back in the early 1980s on HBO, then the only way a child got to see forbidden movies. I didn’t get 90 percent of the jokes, but I laughed hysterically at the gopher and Bill Murray’s grungy assistant groundskeeper. I’m older now, but I still adore that puppet and Murray’s stoner wiseass, and that random Baby Ruth incident. Heck, the entire film is random, packed with adlibs from Murray, Chevy Chase, Ted Knight, Brian Doyle-Murray and Rodney Dangerfield, plus a gaggle of horny youth. Its bare-bones plot tracks a series of characters in and around a snobby golf course and country club, focusing on balls of both the greens and sheets, and drugs and booze. Some scenes soar, others fail. I’ve known many rich, white, golf clubbing, country club bigots who love this fully and openly un-PC film, but have no idea they are the butt of every gag. B+

In “Caddyshack” everyone thought a Baby Ruth candy bar in a pool was a piece of shit. They bolted. No mistake about “Caddyshack II,” though. It is shit. Anyone with brains from the first film got out of the pool after reading the script to this laugh-free snoozer. Not Chase. He stayed. Idiot. Dan Aykroyd replaces Murray, while Jackie Mason tries to be Dangerfield. Both give performances too awful to discuss. A fiasco with a capital F.