Caddyshack

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1980	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	94:06	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie	Cast & Crew
Region	4	Director	Harold Ramis
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Chevy Chase Rodney Dangerfield Ted Knight Michael O'Keefe Bill Murray
RRP	$34.95	Music	Kenny Loggins Johnny Mandel

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	1.0
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 1.0, 192Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 1.0, 192Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 1.0, 192Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	Yes
Subtitles		Action In or After Credits	No

Plot Synopsis

Caddyshack is one of the great comedies from the post-Saturday Night Live era, which coincides more or less with the time that VHS and Betamax were in combat for domination of the home video market. Directed by Harold Ramis, whose credits include appearances and writing assignments in classic comedies such as Ghostbusters and Stripes, it is the story of several young adults who are working as caddies. In particular, it is the story of Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe), a young man with little idea of his future and even less of how he wants to approach it. One fine day, Judge Smails (Ted Knight) comes back to his golf course to discover, much to his horror, that there is a gopher digging around. He soon turns to a groundskeeper who, after having his job threatened, puts his best man on the job. If Carl Spackler (Bill Murray), a slob who appears to have the IQ of a concussed snail, is the best man he's got, then you really have to pity the golf course. And when the show's spectacular finale (to the tune of the 1812 Overture, no less) is over, you almost certainly will. Coming in to further complicate matters is construction company owner Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield), whose behaviour and speech rattle the judge so much that the two more or less instantly wind up at war. Meanwhile, golfing legend Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) spends his time in the film going from a counsellor to Danny, to a reluctant conversation partner with the Judge, to Al's partner in the golf match to end all golf matches. At least at Bushwood Golf Club, in any case.

Twenty years is a long time in the entertainment industry, and this film definitely makes a good demonstration of this fact. Caddyshack now looks incredibly dated, although this has more to do with the costumes and the soundtrack music. The hairstyles, clothing, and some of the lines spoken really broadcast the fact that this film was made at a time when the American concept of political correctness was voting according to your own political aims. The pool party scene in particular makes it clear that this film is now twenty years old. Astoundingly enough, however, the animation of the Gopher is more convincing than the CGI animation in a lot of films that are produced today.

Transfer Quality

Video

The video transfer is slightly better than average, although it shows a lot of giveaways to the film's age. None of these ones are in the costumes or the haircuts, either. The film is presented in the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and it is 16x9 enhanced, which is a major saving grace of this DVD. Film-to-video artefacts, particularly film spots and specks, are frequent. Often enough to be obvious even on a small screen, in fact. Film scratches also appear, although they are much rarer than the spots. Given the age of the film, both are at a much lower level than I would normally expect. Colour saturation tends to be a problem during many sequences, with skin tones in particular losing any semblance of consistency from one scene to another. The colour of the grass, an especially noticeable thing in this film, tends to vary from shot to shot, even if it is of the same section of the golf course. Shadow detail is also distinctly average, although it is little different from any other version I have seen of this film (very little of the film takes place in real darkness, anyway). Background details tend to lose a little definition in some scenes, but much less than I have seen in other films this age. Any lights shown in the backgrounds tend to be blurred. To be fair however, I failed to see any artefacts directly related to the MPEG encoding.

As I have come to expect with Warner Brothers, the subtitles rarely coincide with what the characters are actually saying. This is especially problematic in the English for the Hard Of Hearing subtitles, and Rodney Dangerfield's lines especially suffer from this treatment. The English for the Hard Of Hearing subtitles also move by so fast in some moments as to be absolutely no help at all for the Hard Of Hearing.

Audio

To be fair, the audio transfer is faithful to the film as it was intended. However, it leaves a lot to be desired by any other standards. A choice of three languages is presented, all of them in mono: English, French, and Italian. Given that The Empire Strikes Back came out in the same year and it was presented in glorious stereo, I think this is just sad. However, by mono standards, this is a good audio track. I only listened to the English soundtrack, which the disc defaults to, mainly because I don't speak the other languages at all and have little interest in them. The sound during the Pollywaffle-in-the-pool sequence is especially problematic, however, given that it consists of a lot of incoherent screaming and the great John Williams' instantly recognizable theme from Jaws.

The dialogue ranged from crystal clear to badly muffled, often in the same sentence. This, however, is a problem with the source material rather than the disc, and I don't believe the original negatives are available to make any improvement upon this with because of the film's age and relatively limited appeal to modern audiences, which essentially translate into Warner Brothers or Orion Pictures placing little value in the preservation of the film. Audio sync was not a problem in this film, at least not when whomever was speaking was actually in focus. Some shots appear to have been cut in order to specifically avoid any problems in this area, which is always a good thing. I don't have much to say about the music, except that it is very dated and ranges from pleasant to irritating. As I previously mentioned, this film is encoded in mono, so there is little point in talking about surround presence except to say that only my front speakers got any real work to do.

Extras

In response to Ian's statement that we are running out of interesting ways in which to say that a DVD contains no extras, I now present the following piece of poetry (an English translation of a piece of the song Die anarchische Befreiung der Augenzeugenreligion, by Bethlehem): "Think of a number, and divide it by me, something results to nothing, and nothing is nothing..."

This concludes our first lesson in poetic appreciation of the utter absence of extras. Thank you.

R4 vs R1

The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

Cast Biographies
Theatrical Trailer

The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

Widescreen format

Originally, I had laboured under the assumption that both versions of this disc had the same formatting. However, I have since been informed that, like many films from this era in the Warner Brothers stable, this title is in the Pan & Scan format in Region 1. Whilst there isn't a great amount of picture information that would be lost in this film from Panning and Scanning, the original aspect ratio is vastly preferable. Amazingly enough, Region 4 wins again.

Summary

Caddyshack is the sort of comedy that Hollywood was churning out in droves from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. It might be a good example, but certainly not one of the best.

The video quality is above average, but only just. It might as well have "this is a twenty year old film that will never see any restoration efforts" printed for a few seconds every so often.

The sound quality is faithful to the original source material, which was originally recorded in mono anyway. Given what they had to work with, Warner Brothers have done a reasonable job with this film.

The extras are non-existent.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment

DVD	Grundig GDV 100 D
Display	Panasonic 51cm and 68 cm models, via composite inputs. Samsung 80 cm model, via composite inputs.
Audio Decoder	None
Amplification	Sony STR-DE835
Speakers	Panasonic S-J1500D front speakers, Sharp CP-303A back speakers, Sony SS-CN120 centre speaker, JBL Digital 10 subwoofer