(Robert Sisters Pictures)
Cranked Up Films, 2023. comedy. 89 min.
Grade: 1 out of 4
When a sub-genre is so defined by a single movie that nothing else in it even comes close, it takes big balls to step up to the champ. Exorcism movies, for example, have never come close to The Exorcist at what it does. And in the realm of golf comedies of class clashes, only Adam Sandler has ever managed to tread close to Caddyshack and not get destroyed. But it proves the point: you have to be an A-list comedy actor on his A-game to even stand a chance at holding up under the inevitable comparisons everyone will make.
The Robert sisters are not that. To put it mildly. Despite the unexpected presence in their new movie of James Urbaniak and SNL Please Don’t Destroy troupe member John Higgins, The Country Club fails to capitalize on even the most obvious targets in a pompous, wealthy environment filled with hypocrites and liars.
Since the opening credits include the line, “featuring fart noises by Steve Higgins,” you may get some idea of what’s coming. Whether you find fart sounds and IBS-based shtick inherently funny is personal taste, though enough people do that at least in that category, the movie knows how to generate a cheap gag. Elsewhere, it really doesn’t, and the problem is mostly with the story. It’s filmed and edited well enough, and the supporting actors certainly exert some energy in trying to be funny. Save for Urbaniak’s oily, hackish, desperate club owner, however, none of these characters has consistent throughlines. And as much as the vanity of actor-directors can feel like an undoing, the Robert sisters, who put themselves in the leads, gave their characters almost nothing to do, relegating them to the background, as other wacky supporting characters play the fools. For once, you want to yell at these all-purpose would-be auteurs, “Be vainer!”
Fiona Robert is the credited director, with she and sister Sophia serving as cowriters and co-leads. Their collective list of prior works isn’t long – Fiona, who’s had some high-profile video game voice work, has the most – but they seem to have called in some decent favors. They play teen sisters Tina (Fiona) and Elsa Cartwright (Sophia), taking a summer job at a golf range, who mistakenly think they’ve been invited to a high-stakes youth golf tournament when an invitation arrives for a different Elsa Cartwright. Seeing an opportunity to get money for college and promote their budding clothing line, they proceed even once they figure out it’s a different Elsa – one who conveniently happens to be out of town doing charity work for the entire summer.
At the club, they immediately get hit on by the likes of Roger Kowalski (Higgins), a pink-wearing manbaby who’s chronically insecure but has his every whim catered to by family money; and Marshal Mayson the Fifth (David Levi), who’s all-in on the notion that acting callous will make him attractive to women. Surprisingly, neither Tina nor Elsa seems to mind at all. Elsa agrees to be Roger’s girlfriend when he flat-out awkwardly asks her, and Tina seems legitimately turned on by Mayson’s refusal to apologize to her.
Other characters also start to step into the spotlight, like Roger’s put-upon caddy Lumer (Sean Ormond) and cocky arch-rival Bernard (Akono Dixon). In another subplot, an elderly heiress (Margaret Ladd) becomes attracted to a servant of similar age (Donnie Brasco‘s Madison Arnold). Mostly, though, the movie puts Roger front and center, a decision likely driven by his recent SNL spotlight. He has some major embarrassments in his past to overcome, and some serious parental issues, but he’s such an unsympathetic caricature that it’s hard to feel any stake in that. If anything, you’ll root for him to fail. Meanwhile, Elsa proceeds through the golf tournament with no serious challenges whatsoever.
Urbaniak calibrates his performance just right – the character’s not necessarily likable, but his desperation is palpable, and he never seems to just be playing for the laugh. The same cannot be said of Ladd and Arnold, saddled with trite, mean-spirited “horny old people are gross” bits, or Higgins, who veers between preppie stereotypes, effeminate stereotypes, and diarrhea jokes without much rhyme or reason.
The good news is that the Robert sisters are young, and likely to get better. Their visual storytelling instincts are decent; their humor instincts hamstrung by banal ideas that they may not be old enough to recognize as cliché, like playing “I Can See Clearly Now” on the soundtrack over a visual of people caught in the rain, or using “I Melt With You” immediately after a character’s declaration of love. More fundamentally, they barely give their protagonists any obstacles to overcome, seeming more amused with the antics of broad stock characters tripping themselves up. Perhaps others will cotton to their sense of comedy more than I did, but Caddyshack this is not. Nor even Caddyshack II.