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Originally published July 28, 2007 at 12:00 AM | Page modified July 28, 2007 at 2:02 AM

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Movie review

Total duffer stuck in the rough in "Who's Your Caddy?"

What Tiger Woods giveth, Faizon Love taketh away. The estimable Mr. Woods may have shown black America that the game isn't just for badly...

The Orlando Sentinel

Movie review 1 star

Showtimes and trailer

"Who's Your Caddy?" with Big Boi, Jeffrey Jones, Faizon Love, Sherri Shepherd, Finesse Mitchell, Susan Ward. Directed by Don Michael Paul.

85 minutes. Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, some nudity, language and drug material.

What Tiger Woods giveth, Faizon Love taketh away.

The estimable Mr. Woods may have shown black America that the game isn't just for badly dressed white men anymore.

But "Who's Your Caddy?" a class-war comedy that's more about having no class than it is about breaking through class barriers, rolls the country-club clock back 20 years. It's staggering how little ambition the formerly aim-high Outkast crew showed with this limp "Caddyshack" knock-off.

Big Boi, an interesting villain in "ATL," miscast in the Outkast "Idlewild" vanity project-period piece, is a hip-hop star named C-Note with a burning desire to join the exclusive Carolina Pines Golf & Polo Club in the heart of Confederate flag bumper-stickerland, South Carolina.

Why? We don't learn that right away. He's such a bad golfer the film's effects crew can't hide his ineptitude. He and his posse (the rotund, flatulent funnyman Faizon Love, and rotund and funnier Sherri Shepherd) storm into the club; ask for an application; throw money around; act gauche and coarse and disrespectful to everyone and everything; make threats; make a lot of noise; and are rejected.

Shocking.

Racism is implied, but club president Cummings (Jeffrey Jones, in his first major role since his child-porn problems in 2002) doesn't come right out and say it. It's up to the posse to blurt out variations of "Did he just call you a ... " in some rapid-fire banter.

So C-Note buys his way into a house on the edge of the course, shoots a raunchy rap video on the 17th green and blackmails his way in.

The C-Note crew lands a helicopter on the fairway, trash-talk others at a gentleman's game, cheat and hit on the club president's wife.

C-Note is promptly kicked out. The resolution? A contest. A side story about the rapper charming the club's black lawyer with his mama's fried chicken is too stupid for any screenwriter to take credit for.

Big Boi is more a poseur than an actor here, leaving it to supporting players to carry the comedy. Jones fumes, as he has ever since Ferris Bueller skipped school. But Love and Shepherd bring the laughs, lowdown dirty laughs. Cleavage jokes from Ms. S. and all manner of gas-passing, race-baiting silliness from Mr. Love. His flirtation with Mrs. Cummings (Susan Ward) is the funniest thing in the movie.

The banter among C-Note's crew (Finesse Mitchell is the token stoner) is amusing and playful and is cut together with real snap. There's a murder-for-hire plot involving little people, including Tony Cox from "Bad Santa," cameos by Bruce Bruce and the crazy-eyed Terry Crews and an Al Sharpton-Jesse Jackson riff by Garrett Morris.

But "Who's Your Caddy?" makes you wish these people had better things to do than tag along after some bore who wants to integrate a country club.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

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