Golf Movies You May Have Missed
Are you looking to expand your golf media literacy? Well, you'd be surprised at the amount of movies about golf out there, whether sweeping epics that invite audiences to briefly live among the gentry, or zero-to-hero stories where the everyman can remind the rich folk that everyone is human. But for every highly emotional Oscar-nominated character study, there are many that have gone beneath the radar - for better, or worse. Here are a few that I've found in my travels, that you probably won't be finding on IMDB.
- The Legend of Badger Vance - This period piece features Will Smith as a completely ordinary badger who appears in the dead of night to provide golf advice to a drunken Matt Damon.
- Harpy Gilmore - More or less the exact same movie as Happy Gilmore, except that Adam Sandler has been replaced with a monstrous bird-woman-hybrid (albeit still one with an affinity towards hockey). The fight scene with Bob Barker goes somewhat differently.
- Cattyshack - The classic golfing farce remastered for a new generation. Thanks to the miracle of modern computer technology (cough), the part of groundskeeper Carl Spackler has been recast to Garfield as he appeared in 2004's Garfield movie. Nothing else has changed.
- Gorf on Dolf - The fabled lost entry in Tim Conway's cult-favorite video series, and the only one not to feature Tim Conway at all. In his place is a 1981 "Gorf" arcade machine with a bizarre fascination for a certain Swedish actor. "HE WAS REALLY GOOD IN THAT HE-MAN MOVIE," says Gorf.
- RoboCup - When Detroit police officer Alex J. Murphy is brutally murdered on duty, Omni Consumer Products take advantage of this opportunity to rebuild him... directly into the eighteenth green at Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club, just in time for the 6000 SUX Grand Invitational.
- Jurassic Par - After the events of the original film, InGen struggle to figure out what to do with the Park. As we come to find, the answer was not to construct eighteen holes on it. Jeff Goldblum is seen shanking his tee shot out of bounds into "a huge pile of shit." The lawyer gets eaten by a Tyrannosaurus while attempting to escape from a fairway bunker.
- Columbo, in "Out of Bounds" - An unaired episode of the original 1970s series; a Los Angeles County judge (Ted Knight) bumps off a local defense lawyer (Ed Asner), and buries him beneath the first tee box at Torrey Pines. Columbo, invited to the Amateur Open, swears something is off about his drive.
- Die Par'd - New York policeman John McClane is in town to visit estranged wife Holly at the Nakatomi Open at Pebble Beach when it is seized by German terrorists intending to make off with the Hole in One contest prize car. McClane finds it difficult to swing without shoes.
- O Brother, Where Art Thy Ball? - A Depression era period piece set in the American South, following three prison escapees as they struggle to locate Everett McGill's errant tee shot. Delmar believes it has been transformed into a toad.
- Parfield - Thanks to the miracle of very careful film editing from archival footage, 2004's Garfield movie now stars not a computer animated orange cat, but groundskeeper Carl Spackler, from the late 70s golfing farce, Caddyshack. Absolutely nothing else has been changed.
- Street Golfer: The Movie - Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia star in this adaptation of the D3 Publisher Simple Series game, in which golfers from around the world gather in the streets of Shibuya to smash balls up highways and off buildings.
- Jane Eyre Bud - An adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel, wherein the lead role is played by a Golden Retriever. A professor of literature appears as the cast dispute this; he declares that there "ain't no rule that a dog can't act." The game of golf does not factor into this film at all.