This is almost shameful to admit, but I only recently saw Caddyshack. I had seen bits and pieces of the movie over the years, and even knew many of the quotes and scenes (Baby Ruth!) just from being pop culture aware, but it wasn’t until recently that I actually sat down and watched the entire thing, start to finish.

Obviously, I loved it. Great movie, one of the all time best sports comedies, and a great example of R rated comedy done well. A little low brow and crass in a late 70’s/early 80’s way, but still a damn good movie. Good enough that I unwittingly thought checking out the sequel would be a good idea.

Christ, was that a bad idea.

I am guessing excessive studio involvement led to the abomination that is Caddyshack II, but I really don’t know for sure. Whatever the reason, it resulted in not only the worst movie sequel of all time, but quite possibly the worst movie of all time period. Sure, there are plenty of terrible movies out there, but most of them never started with much promise. Sure Battlefield Earth was terrible but you kind of know what you are getting into when you decide to watch a two hour long Scientologist wet dream. Caddyshack II on the other hand should have been a decent movie. Probably wouldn’t have been as good as the original (with a few exceptions sequels usually have trouble living up to the original), but there was real potential there, making the disaster that ensued that much more tragic.

Whoever was in charge of Caddyshack II decided to change everything that was good about the original, dumbing everything down to the absolute lowest common denominator. Let’s go over what was changed between Caddyshack and Caddyshack II.

From An R Rating To A PG

The original Caddyshack had a well earned R rating, featuring lots of swearing and some awesome gratuitous nudity from Cindy Morgan/Lacey Underall. They neutered the sequel, leaving it unable to even manage a PG-13. The end result was a bunch of humorless crap that didn’t appeal to anyone.

Rodney Dangerfield Being Replaced By Jackie Mason

Rodney Dangerfield wasn’t the funniest part of Caddyshack (that was Bill Murray), but he certainly contributed. His character was a likable guy and he provided more than a few laughs.

Jackie Mason on the other hand isn’t funny. He’s irritating. If you look at IMDB page you’ll see that the guy barely works. He spends most of his time as an intentionally stereotypical Jewish standup comedian, recently causing a ruckus when he referred to Barack Obama with a racist Jewish term. This was a dumb casting choice clearly made by someone who didn’t have the first idea why the first movie worked.

According to Wikipedia, Dangerfield was asked to save the film at the last moment by the director, but after reading the script Dangerfield is claimed to have said “What’s with the ferris wheel?”, referring to Mason’s character turning the country club into an amusement park in one of the more ridiculous plot points. Supposedly Rodney dumped the script in the trash, where it should have stayed.

Dan Akroyd Replacing Bill Murray

I don’t particularly hate Dan Akroyd, the guy has been in a metric ton of shit over his career, but he also wrote Ghostbusters, so he gets a pass on most of it from me. I’m sure he enjoys a big fat paycheck like anyone, and I can’t hate him for that.

That being said, Bill Murray’s turn as the groundskeeper in Caddyshack was iconic. Given that the sequel was filmed eight years after the original there’s certainly no way that the filmmakers weren’t aware of that. It’s not like this was made pretty quickly after the first before Murray’s performance had had the opportunity to become legendary. Eight years had gone by with people watching Murray do battle with the gopher, and the makers of Caddyshack II had to know settling for anyone else would be a travesty. They would have really had to back up a dump truck full of money to get Murray to do Caddyshack II, given the script they were working with, but if they couldn’t get him then they just shouldn’t have made the movie.

But in an awesome move someone decided it’d be a good idea for Akroyd to speak in a really, really stupidly grating voice, probably trying (and failing the way they failed in every other aspect of filmmaking) to ape Murray’s delivery from the original.

These three changes alone were enough to ensure a terrible movie, and I haven’t even mentioned Michael O’Keefe getting replaced by the bland Jonathan Silverman or Ted Knight (who had recently passed away so we can’t really blame anyone for once) being replaced by Robert Stack.

I have seen some bad movies and bad sequels in my life, but Caddyshack II really is the worst. Bad movies obviously still get made, and while this might be a lonely opinion I actually think Hollywood has more respect for audience’s intelligence these days. I don’t think Caddyshack II would have been so poorly made in today’s Hollywood. It’s a real shame that a potentially great sports comedy franchise was ruined so completely and thoroughly. PG for God’s sake, what the hell were they thinking?