There are movies that have great cultural significance.  There are movies that are instant classics, movies that can be quoted in a semi-crowded room and at least one person will know exactly what you are talking about, movies so important that even the Dali Lama has seen them.  Then, there is a movie that fits into all of those categories.  It was never recognized by the Academy, it is not in the National Film Registry, but it is one of the most popular movies of its kind, a movie whose success is utterly baffling.  The movie is “Caddyshack”, and its almost universal appeal continues to confuse people every day.

To put it bluntly, everything about “Caddyshack” is a train wreck.  There are huge continuity errors, the plot is incredibly thin, scenes were added haphazardly at the last minute, most of the cast didn’t know how to play golf, even though the movie takes place on a golf course, the entire film is a disjointed mess.  Even so, it is one of the biggest comedies of all time.  As it turns out, if a movie is funny, no one really cares about anything else.  When people talk about “Caddyshack”, no one talks about the central plot (a caddy from a large family trying to get a scholarship so he can go to law school), the actor who played the protagonist (Michael O’Keefe. Name doesn’t ring a bell, does it?), but rather the heavily improvised performances given by Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, whose characters have little to do with the plot, but have caused the movie to go down in comedy history.

When “Caddyshack” is viewed with a critical eye, it is extremely flawed.  Most of those errors can be attributed to first-time director Harold Ramis, who, quite frankly, had no idea what he was doing.  Being a comedy writer himself (he helped pen the script neglected by most of the cast), he was in the film for the humor, not perfection.  If there was a take with some kind of mistake that had a better joke than the take without mistakes, he would opt for the funnier take in the editing room.  If a scene had an important piece of story in it, but wasn’t funny, it would hit the cutting room floor.  As a result, the movie doesn’t have much in the way of plot depth.

All in all, “Caddyshack” is a disaster, but, like many disasters, it’s hilarious.  Not only does it contain the famous “Cinderella story” speech, but it is itself a Cinderella story; a bunch of dirty interns previously condemned to uncredited rewrites and general grunt work were visited by the fairy godmother that is Universal Studios and were given an opportunity to make a movie of their own, but more importantly, also gave them a budget, most of which was spent on and explosion so large that air traffic was disrupted and flights delayed.  But who cares?  It’s hilarious.