Time to land this plane.

July has been defined by comedy more than anything else. So far, we’ve had Airplane!, Used Cars, and Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie, and we’re going to kick off this final installment with a comedy that helped define the decade.

It definitely had an impact on me, because when I finally joined the workforce for the first time in 1984, it was as a caddy for the Honors Course outside Chattanooga. It was a big beautiful private course, and the experience was closer to what I saw in Caddyshack than you might think. The job was perfect for me at 14 and 15 because it forced me outdoors and because the wealthy members of the club threw money around like it meant nothing. I learned a lot about how invisible you are when you’re providing manual labor to rich people, though, and about how people will treat you when they think you are “just” the help.

I learned some things from Dressed To Kill, too, and I’m pretty sure I wore out at least one section of the VHS copy of the film I had when I was 12 in the process. God bless the filthy, filthy ‘80s.

Let’s get to it.

JULY 25

Caddyshack
Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Michael O’Keefe, Bill Murray, Sarah Holcomb, Scott Colomby, Cindy Morgan, Dan Resin, Henry Wilcoxon, Elaine Aiken, Albert Salmi, Ann Ryerson, Brian Doyle-Murray, Hamilton Mitchell, Peter Berkrot, John F. Barmon Jr., Lois Kibbee, Brian McConnachie, Scott Powell, Ann Crilley, Cordis Heard, Scott Sudden, Jackie Davis, Thomas A. Carlin, Minerva Scelza, Kenneth Burritt, Rebecca Burritt, Barbara Keegan, Scott Jackson, Ron Frank, Patricia Wilcox, Debi Frank, Tony Gulliver, Kim Bordeaux, Lori Lowe, Marcus Breece, Mark Chiriboga, Fred Buch, Frank Schuller, Mel Pape, Marge McKenna, Bruch McLaughlin, Dennis McCormack, Violet Ramis, Judy Arman, Dr. Dow, Paige Coffman, Donna M. Wiggin, James Hotchkiss, Douglas Kenney
cinematography by Stevan Larner
music by Johnny Mandel
screenplay by Brian Doyle-Murray & Harold Ramis & Douglas Kenney
produced by Douglas Kenney
directed by Harold Ramis
Rated R
1 hr 38 mins

Danny Noonan works as a caddy at the elite Bushwood Country Club to earn money for college, and he encounters eccentric club members and caddies alike.

Whose movie is Caddyshack?

It’s a fair question, because if nothing else, Caddyshack represents a once-in-a-generation collision of different voices, styles, and eras of comedy. The chaotic production of the film should have resulted in a train crash by all rights, but somehow, director Harold Ramis pulled it all together and the result is perhaps the definitive snobs-vs-the-slobs ‘80s comedy, absolutely overstuffed with great performances and wild comedy invention.

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