But no. This may be the worst commercially produced film I’ve ever seen in my life and is *easily* a 0/10. The only other thing I’ve ever watched that jumps to mind as being anywhere near as physically painful to sit through is Dana Carvey’s 2002 “Master of Disguise,” which at least had the virtue of a 65-minute run time (not flame, they had to count the filler reel that runs alongside the end credits for SAG to consider it a feature-length movie); you could also write that one off as being directed to toddlers, who probably enjoyed Carvey’s funny costumes and voices.

I feel like there are probably a lot of poasters in my boat of having not seen Caddyshack II, to whom I’ll say: you should consider seeing it. Be advised that you cannot watch it straight through. You basically have to stop periodically, in ever shorter increments, in order to grant yourself respite from the pain of Jackie Mason’s torturously unfunny lead, which then somehow gets even worse when Dan Ackroyd’s character is introduced 75% of the way through the film. I used these breaks to scour the internet for narrative explanations of what happened to cause this movie. (I figured there’d be at least one good long-form piece on the development and production of this abortion, but everyone involved seems surprisingly chill about just taking their lumps and moving on… these films often have hilarious behind-the-scenes stories that unfold as everyone starts to realize what’s happening; e.g., the two Universal production heads generally agreed to have jointly approved George Lucas’s spellbindingly bad mid-80’s “Howard the Duck” were rumored to have gotten into a fistfight after they first screened the film, initially sitting in stunned silence until one turned to the other and was like “Dave, you’ve always supported the projects I’ve greenlit, so I’ll be damned if I don’t work my hardest to help You with this one.”)

For those not familiar with Caddyshack II, only Chevy Chase reprises his role, but they sub new actors into the Caddyshack I character archetypes on an essentially 1-to-1 basis: Jackie Mason is the new Rodney Dangerfield / Al Czervik; Dan Ackroyd is the new Bill Murray / Carl Spackler; Robert Stack is the new Ted Knight / Judge Smails; some dopey-looking beta in a Hawaiian shirt is the new Danny Noonan. The only meaningfully new character is Randy Quaid, who plays a borderline-psychotic insane shitlawyer whose antics become increasingly cartoonlike as the plot goes on. I’ll address each character (except the new Noonan, who’s a non-character) in order.

The single biggest problem with the film is Jackie Mason. Namely that he is (1) fucking terrible; and (2) on screen probably more than twice as much as any character from Caddyshack I, which had a truly ensemble cast, ever was. I’d only vaguely heard of Mason before watching this movie, and I could believe the guy could possibly be funny and likeable in a different context (and probably also a different generation), but whoever decided to cast him as the lead of a feature-length film had to have been running some kind of subtle campaign to promote anti-Semitism in U.S. audiences. If you’re not familiar, Mason makes Mel Brooks look goyishe and Rodney Dangerfield look like a Mayflower descendant. He’s short, portly, looks to be about 68 years old, and has frizzy dyed hair and a Yiddish accent that crosses the line, for me, into what I’d call ESL.

Let me say that while I think Rodney Dangerfield is really funny and great in the first one, I don’t consider the guy some sort of genius of silver-screen comedy: he’s a standup comedian, and he got just the right amount of screen time in the original film; that character, even when well done, is not supposed to be on screen 70% of the film. Mason’s character is also written worse than Czervick’s; rather than being a generic real-estate developer (itself sufficient to convey new-money sensibilities), he specifically builds low-income housing, including by tearing down local historical structures — objections to which are portrayed unambiguously as frivolous and pretextually evil.

The second biggest problem is Dan Ackroyd, an actor for whom I have a great deal of generalized goodwill of untraceable origin. If you decide to watch this movie and you get to, say, the 50-minute mark (at which point Ackroyd has not yet appeared), you will likely not believe what I’m about to say: Ackroyd is actually worse than Mason. He plays the role of an ex-military wacko with unexplained access to pricey gadgets by affecting an inconsistently high-pitched voice that at its best points resembles Kermit the Frog. The new Smails character hires Ackroyd to murder Mason during the final tournament, but Ackroyd gets distracted by the gopher and “hilarity” ensues instead. The gopher now talks by the way.

Robert Stack (I had to look that up) plays the uptight club-president character, and he isn’t so much bad at it as Ted Knight was underratedly pitch-perfect at it in the original. Stack is bland and forgettable and I couldn’t repeat a single line he said from the movie despite watching it like 12 hours ago. As a result, his is one of the very best performances in the film.

Chevy Chase has declined substantially in appearance and charisma in the 8 years since the original, and has a faggy little diamond ear stud to boot, but to me was *easily* the high point of the film, since his scenes weren’t funny but also usually weren’t wince-inducing; I don’t think I ever had to pause the film in the roughly 4-and-a-half aggregate minutes that Chase was on the screen, which is saying something given that I had to stop the movie probably 30 times in all.

Quaid’s character does not work at all, and some people will likely consider him the single worst in the film. I at least appreciated that they were trying to do something new. He also delivered the only moment in the whole film that was redolent of the comedy from the first one, asking “which one of you is [Robert Stacks’s / the new Judge Smails’s] son?” to a 30-year-old and a 67-year-old lawyer, the latter of whom gives a what-the-fuck look from off to the side of the screen as the former earnestly answers that it’s him.

Jackie Mason’s love interest is Dyan Cannon, who is 5 attractiveness points higher, 2 inches taller, and appears 30 years younger than Mason. She did not deserve this romantic pairing, and I say that as someone who likes to watch porn of confidence-lacking late-teen and early-20s girls getting degradingly fucked, fish-hooked, etc. by ugly bald 58-year-old cadaver-looking dudes with mustaches and hollowed-out eye sockets. As a viewer it’s also confusing, and I did not understand that that’s what was happening in the first several scenes where the two interact; I assumed Dyan’s flirtatious laughter was conveying an “easygoing young woman who finds elderly man’s ornery doddering to be charming and funny” dynamic — I should note that the audience has to suspend its disbelief to find even that reaction plausible — but not one of utterly nonsensical sexual interest in a 5’4” Long Island-Jewish septuagenarian.

****

The aesthetic of the film is very cartoonish, and there are virtually no *actual* golf scenes. Mason buys Bushwood from Ty Webb early on and transforms it into a Coney Island-style theme park and minigolf attraction, which is how the final Snobs-versus-Slobs tournament (to win back the club) is played. (Think: Randy Quaid dressed as a hockey goaltender and running in and swatting away the new Judge Smails's putt right before it goes into the hole. Now prepare to witness your imagination become reality.) The golf swings make the much-maligned swings from Caddyshack I look like Payne Stewart by comparison; I read that Mason worked extensively with a golf pro and was trying to do a real swing, but upon seeing the results I literally do not believe that.

The film is strangely PG, with no sex, drugs, or nudity, and no Lacy Underall equivalent (I guess we got Randy Quaid instead?). It’s permeated with weirdly explicit class recognition and class-based resentment — nothing like the first film, where we observe stuffy rich, nouveau riche, trustfund-layabout, and blue-collar archetypes all regarding each other with civilly guarded contempt and behaving in ways they might actually behave on their worst day IRL. The sequel takes a clear side in favor of the nouveau riche — not of the hardworking common man, mind you, but specifically of the garishly tasteless dumb-money slumlord Yid who expresses open contempt for not only Bushwood, but for tradition, class, community roots, golf, etc. — while having the characters behave in ways that are not even proper exaggerations of how these groups behave. (E.g., when Jackie Mason wants to tear down the historical carriage house — which he has been enjoined from doing by court order — the stuffy rich folks are out holding protest signs and physically blocking Mason’s bulldozers. This is not something rich people do, and is in fact a tactic most associated with individuals of essentially opposite political orientation, race, SES, and age of the country-club snobs being lampooned. Mason attempts to run them over with the bulldozer, before having Randy Quaid respond to the legal arguments made by the lawyers who procured the injunction by telling them that he is going to come to their homes and beat them to death with a baseball bat rather than engaging in motions practice.)

As I mentioned earlier, writings about the film’s production aren’t as fun as they sometimes are, because no one defends the film’s merits and there’s been no critical reevaluation whatsoever. Harold Ramis clearly harbors some it’s-not-fair irritation about being guilt-tripped into not persisting in his demands to have his name removed from the film, but Jackie Mason and director Allan Arkush basically treat their involvement in the movie like a DUI conviction — address it only when it’s brought up, and when it is, acknowledge the fuckup and then move on. I think a major issue is that the folks who were involved in it immediately realized that the movie presented a serious risk to their careers, many of which were ascendant but vulnerable at the time (including Mason, who apparently was just given the lead in a sitcom) and thus couldn’t afford to dish dirt or bitch or even be good-natured about it, or do anything other than keep moving forward with eyes straight ahead. To that end, the New York Times ended its review at the time with the not-very-pithy but soberly predictive warning: “Caddyshack II is the kind of film that sends careers spiraling downward.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42393984)

I think a big part of the issue is that he treats 8-figure-budget, feature-length films with the same cavalier treatment he gives to an SNL sketch, which in turn is the amount of thought, discarded and progressively refined prototype characters, and practice that most people would put into an improv skit. "Eh, if it's funny, it's funny, great; if it bombs, cut to the next one."

Although I kid you not, if you told me he did his character in Caddyshack II in 3 hours from first reading the script to leaving the set for good, I would *still* say that he did an incredibly shitty job.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42394395)

not sure if you intended that

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42394237)

They are five years apart IRL. I had a similar experience watching The Natural recently, when I realized Wilford Brimley was only two years older than Robert Redford.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42394277)

Can you link to some of this scholarship you mentioned on Howard the Duck and the fallout after the studio saw it?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42394367)

Here's a typical retelling, albeit without the details: "Following a test-screening, Universal executives Sid Sheinberg and Frank Price were allegedly arguing about who was to blame for green-lighting this film, which then ended in a fistfight." (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091225/trivia)

Howard the Duck, while of course awful, can actually be pretty fun to watch as a so-bad-it's-good movie. That film's shittiness derives from a couple ultra-fundamental mistakes -- I'm talking "it should have been an animated movie"-level stuff -- and from its wildly uneven tone. Also, the single best scene in the movie is probably the very first one, where Howard gets teleported out of DuckWorld and into the human world, and that scene's ruined for the audience because we've still got that sinking feeling in the pit of our stomach as we try to acclimate ourselves to just how bad the duck costume looks and how it is nearly certain to make the next 90 minutes a much different experience than hoped for.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42394683)

watched some clips on YT as i had confused jackie mason and james mason, and i see what you mean.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42394382)

This sentence, just dropped into your review, made me burst out laughing.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42394758)

they even have the same name

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42394790)

Also, I'm gay.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42395063)

Caddyshack II is actually very fun and enjoyable. I've literally watched it multiple times across my life. yes, each time by choice.

Sorry, OP, but you're just a fonzanoon!

===

Chandler Young: Your target's name is Jack Hartounian. I want him to be discouraged from erecting any more structures on Bushwood estates.

Capt. Tom Everett: Discouraged? As in "extreme prejudice"?

Chandler Young: We already tried extreme prejudice. It didn't work.

Capt. Tom Everett: No, I mean do you want him *terminated*?

Chandler Young: The less I know about that the better.

Capt. Tom Everett: Good! Good, that's my policy exactly. You see that way, when we're captured, and they attach the 12-volt car batteries to our testicles--which can, does, and *has* happened...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#42395676)

https://www.si.com/media/2020/07/24/caddyshack-2-worst-sequel-ever-inside-story

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#44629876)

a lot of people are straight-up completely unaware this movie exists (ignorance is bliss).

i remember trying to explain to someone that a sequel existed, and then trying for a long time to put into words the Dank Akroyd scene in the food truck. the more i tried to explain it, the more it sounded like i was making it up, and the person wouldn't believe me that it was real and got angry with how stupid my joke was.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#46858294)

glad this thread exists. there are also mighty duck ii loyalists on xo. very dangerous content here for the uninitiated

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#46858361)

sounds like it was tailored perfectly for the present era

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4825473&forum_id=2#46858506)