Who’s Your Caddy?

It looks as if Delta Farce finally has some competition in the “Worst Title of the Year” race as Who’s Your Caddy? lands with a deafening thud into theaters this week. The movie is basically a rehash (which is a nice way of saying “blatant rip-off”) of Caddyshack (1980). I would call it a rethinking, but that would insinuate that some thought was put into making this movie. In fact, Who’s Your Caddy? is so dreadful that it makes Caddyshack II (1988) look as good as Caddyshack. Heck, I would rather watch actual golf than have to sit through this movie again, which, believe me, is quite a statement.

The film follows C-Note (Antwan Andre Patton, aka Big Boi of hip-hop group OutKast), a rap mogul who is denied membership into an exclusive, and predominately white, country club by the club’s stodgy president, Cummings (Jeffrey Jones, Beetle Juice). After Mr. Note manages to gain membership by buying part of the course’s 17th hole, the movie then becomes a battle of wills, as Cummings attempts to expel C-Note from the club, with the film climaxing in a (surprise!) winner-take-all game of golf. It’s the same outsiders-versus-the-establishment setup that was used 27 years ago in Caddyshack, except without anything even resembling a laugh, and an unfortunate lack of robotic critters.

A lot has been made in some corners as to the movie’s obvious perpetuation of both black and white stereotypes, but I personally don’t find this as offensive as how blatantly simple the movie is in every conceivable aspect. It’s not so much that the jokes are bad (which they are) but rather the maker’s penchant for constantly taking the easy route. You want fart jokes? How about penis jokes and little people jokes? Well, Who’s Your Caddy? has them in spades. It’s almost as if someone found Rob Schneider’s table scraps and decided to make them into a movie. The laziness that permeates the film goes part and parcel with the film’s desire to revel in racial stereotypes, since making deep or original characters would take some type of creativity or effort, something the makers seem to want to have no part of.

And who are these makers, you ask? Well, we have Don Michael Paul, whose one big directorial credit is the 2002 Steven Seagal/Ja Rule actioner Half Past Dead (which somehow makes the pairing of Seagal and DMX in Exit Wounds (2001) sound appealing) and his cowriter, Bradley Allenstein, who wrote the cross-dressing basketball opus Juwanna Mann (2002). When you take the talent behind the camera into account, it’s no surprise that the whole mess is handled like a bad sitcom, which makes Patton’s inclusion in the movie all the more unforgivable. Despite the fact that Patton continues to show, especially after Idlewild (2006), that he’s likable on-screen, it almost seems that he has given up on trying to convince anyone that he’s the more talented member of OutKast.

The movie does conceivably have some local interest since the film was shot in Aiken, S.C. Of course, if you want to see Aiken that badly, just drive there and save yourself the agony that is Who’s Your Caddy?. Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, some nudity, language and drug material.