Viewers and critics versed in golf lore can pass judgment on how well this documentary about caddies enhances their knowledge of the sport itself. But on the behalf of those utterly uninterested in golf, I can report that it is moderately interesting.
Director Jason Baffa’s film is a mostly bland, workmanlike amble through the history of caddies. However, the film does reveal that Bill Murray, noted golfing enthusiast and co-star of that revered comedy of golfing ribaldry Caddyshack (1980), can smooth talk a microphone with the best of the world’s slumming A-listers as a documentary narrator. Here, he enhances an otherwise plodding, cliche-riddled script with wry, tongue-in-cheek merriment, throwing in a delightful, fluting whimsy to his lilting, mock-Scots pronunciation of the name Carnoustie, which crops up a lot here given it’s the name of both a course and a posse of 300 Scots immigrants to the US who helped shape the game there in the last century.
To the film’s credit, it tries to balance love for the game and audience expectations on the one hand and, on the other, some cautious acknowledgement that the gender, class and race issues embedded in the sport’s history are a bit tricky. It’s not as if it’s woke exactly, but there’s an appropriately reverent celebration of the skill of key caddies such as Willie “Pappy” Stokes. And there’s a nod to how much Tiger Woods, not interviewed here, changed the sport’s image and economic structure, particularly for caddies.
• Loopers: The Caddie’s Long Walk is released in the UK on 23 July.
