48
Metascore
12 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75Chicago TribuneGene SiskelChicago TribuneGene SiskelCaddyshack has a low-budget look that warmly welcomes the all-important teenage audience. It looks like a film they could have made. And everyone associated with the film—in front of and behind the camera—is aware that he or she is making a frivolous film...That's why Rodney Dangerfield's cornball jokes and spritzing barbs are so perfectly right for the film. These are throwaway jokes for a most disposable motion picture, the kind of film that drive-ins were designed to play.
- 70The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyIt's not as funny as "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie," but it is less pushy than "Meatballs." It is not as thickly stocked with outrageous moments as "Animal House," yet it is far easier to take than "Where the Buffalo Roam."
- 63Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertCaddyshack never finds a consistent comic note of its own, but it plays host to all sorts of approaches from its stars, who sometimes hardly seem to be occupying the same movie.
- 60TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineToo much time is spent on the forced romance between O'Keefe and Holcomb, an attractive waitress, however, and the slapstick becomes utterly mindless toward the end (as if the producer said, "Okay, it's time for this film to really get out of control!"). Still, the laughs keep coming.
- 30Time OutTime OutIf you're still at the age when farting and nose-picking seem funny, then Caddyshack should knock you dead. Buried deep - very deep - beneath the rising tide of effluent is a pleasant enough story of a kind about trying to make it to the top as a caddy while yet remaining human; a movie which could have done for golf what Breaking Away did for cycling. Instead it allows a string of resistible TV comics (Chase excepted) to mug through an atrocious chain of lame-brained set pieces, the least vulgar of which involves a turd in a swimming pool.
- 30Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrThe first-time director, Harold Ramis, can't hold it together: the picture lurches from style to style (including some ill-placed whimsy with a gopher puppet) and collapses somewhere between sitcom and sketch farce. Male bonding remains the highest value of the Animal House comedies: women are trashed with a fierceness out of Mickey Spillane.
- 20Washington PostGary ArnoldWashington PostGary ArnoldShabbily photographed and raggedly assembled. Caddyshack is hanging evidence that Ramis wasn't prepared for the assignment or clever enough to fake it...Ramis proves unable to sustain a single frayed thread of plot continuity, and none of the prominent cast members -- Chevy Chase, Murray, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight -- enjoys opportunities decisive enough or direction competent enough to generate a little comic momentum and help prevent the gratuitous material from falling in a stinky, dismembered heap.
- 0San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco ChronicleUnreconstructed fans of Chevy Chas, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight or Bill Murray might find something to guffaw at in this lamebrained movie that purports to be a satire on country club life but makes everybody look like slobs. Except - perhaps - a little Irish wench named Sarah Holcomb and the gopher who tears up the golf course. Should have put the gopher to work on the script.