Caddyshack

A week over-viewing Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein for an upcoming Lambcast on the movie has left me contemplating how movies—which do not change without some "Director's Cut" interference—can change over time. Because the viewer changes. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein holds up pretty well (pretty well...) from the time I saw it as a 9 year old to my current dotage. Some do not.

Case in point: Caddyshack, which, I once thought was hilarious, but now...seems rather puerile. Oh, it has moments of entertainment in spots, but a lot of the time slices, and sometimes just whiffs. It's a bogey rather than a birdie and it is certainly not the hole-in-one I remember.

So, yeah, kvetch all you like about it, but it's going out on the traditional "Take Out the Trash" Day.

Caddyshack (Harold Ramis, 1980) One has few regrets in life, hopefully. As one gets older, experience colors perception, and suddenly movies like The Rules of the Game speak to you in new ways, and movies like Caddyshack...well, I've been spending a remorseful few minutes thinking of all the people I'd recommended this movie, too.

Not that Caddyshack is horrible, mind you. But it hasn't aged well since my college days.* Fond memories of Harold Ramis' "Animal House for Juvenile Adults" is full of references and gags that seem geezer-ish. But there are some things that hold up. It's Chevy Chase's funniest performance in the movies (I believe that is the very definition of "Damning with Faint Praise"), and one of Bill Murray's wildest--you get the impression that they were winging it, Chase improvising the physical with Murray skewering the dialog. It showed Rodney Dangerfield to be a weirdly endearing clumsy performer for the movies, and it's Ted Knight at his foolish best.

Two bits still work--the "Baby Ruth" gag, and the little mini-epic contained in it of the minister's perfect game in the rain. But, don't be surprised if the one thing you take away from it is John Dykstra's roly-poly gopher puppet.

* It reminds of the recent reactions to the release of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." series on DVD, where the adults who watched it as kids ask facetiously why it was re-filmed using a "crap filter," that made all the sets look like cheesy back-lots, the performances hammy, and the thrills, not so much. Memories are yet green. The reality is oft-times compost.

Michael Clayton

Written at the time of the film's release.

"This keeps getting better and better"

Michael Clayton is not himself today. A lawyer for the firm of Kenner, Bach and Ledeen, he finds himself at 45 and the end of his rope without a knot, deep in debt, estranged from family, and very aware that that "whooshing" going by outside his Mercedes window is his life and he doesn't have much to show for it. Then he gets a phone call. "Arthur Edens just stripped down naked in a deposition room in Milwaukee." As its the firm's biggest case at the moment with billions on the line, he has to go fix it.

That's what Michael Clayton does. He has little to do with the law. He's a fixer. Need a fast consult? He does it. Need palms greased? He does that. Tickets to the big game? Scored. A leaning story in the press? Not worth a thought. "I'm not a miracle worker," he says to a rich client who's just run over a jogger in one of his cars. "I'm a janitor." And his territory is the moral sludge that he must wade through on a daily basis

"I'm not the enemy here" he tells his friend Edens, who's off his med's and has broken down to a Howard Beale-ish moral clarity that is legally inconvenient. The madness drops from Edens' eyes. "Then who are you?"

That's the question. And at that point, to say any more would be spoiling one of the best, deepest and engaging drama-thrillers to come down the aisle in a long time. 

Supposedly, when Clooney saw this script by Tony Gilroy he wanted to direct it, but deferred to Gilroy who probably saved this screenplay for himself. One of the better script doctors, it was his work on the "Bourne" series of films that made his name, and his directorial debut crackles with the same precision he brings to one of his unaltered screenplays. Just to allay Warner Bros. fears, the film is top-heavy with directing talent: Clooney stars and produces, Steve Soderbergh and Anthony Minghella are on the production side, as well as Sydney Pollack (the film feels like a Pollack project) who pulls off a career-best performance as the law partner on top of all the chaos.

Michael O'Keefe makes a welcome return to films as the firm's "asshole" (I wonder if its on his business cards), and Tom Wilkinson's Edens—babbling, disheveled, isolated, walking around in a pure light that only he knows is there—is the showiest part, has the best lines and the actor throws off his customary restraint and relishes the opportunity. Tilda Swinton is all contained paroxysm as an outwardly smooth CEO whose veneer of respectability is as thin as that of the chemical company she heads. Then there's "The Clooney", all-furrowed, with a Raymond Burr hood over his eyes, hating himself and everything he's doing. His one moment of respite has all the subtlety of a burning bush.

And then, things get interesting.

It "synopses" like a drag, but it's sharp, cynical, and has a "nailed it" kind of ending that makes it all worth it.