Happy B-Day CADDYSHACK

Today marks the 30th Anniversary of CADDYSHACK's release. I love CADDYSHACK. It's easily one of my favorite films and quite possibly my favorite comedy of all time. There's just so much to love about it. The Bill Murray stuff is great, that goes without saying, but the stuff that makes this film for me are a lot of little things.

My favorite character is Judge Smails. Ted Knight is just awesome in this film. He's the quintessential curmudgeonly comedy villain. His interactions with his nephew Spaulding still make me laugh every time.





Funny note: The actor who played Spaulding never acted again in anything else. I wonder what happened to him. Personally, I believe that's kind of an awesome career, playing Spaulding and retiring, chances are he never would have had as good a role again.

Back to Smails: Knight truly owns that role and provides so many more hilarious scenes.



There's also the scene where he has Danny come to his office and he tells him: "I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber, didn't want to do it, but I felt I owed it to them".

Apart from Smails there's a lot of other great moments. Dangerfield is pretty spectacular throughout, delivering one of my favorite lines in cinema history "Hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid!" to much applause. Chevy Chase is also in top form here as is Brain Doyle-Murray.

There are the few things I choose to ignore like Noonan's peculiar Irish girlfriend and the fairly lame gopher (which actually sets up some good stuff from Murray), but on the overall this movie is just solid.

The New York Times review of the film called it "Immediately forgettable", I beg to differ.