WHO'S YOUR CADDY? — * — Big Boi, Faizon Love, Sherri Shepherd; rated PG-13 (vulgarity, sex, nudity, profanity, drugs); Carmike Ritz; Cinemark Jordan Landing; Megaplex District
What Tiger Woods giveth, Faizon Love taketh away.
The estimable Woods may have shown black America that the game isn't just for badly dressed white men anymore. He may have made it (somewhat) cool for black people to drive Buicks.
But "Who's Your Caddy?" is more about having no class than it is about breaking through class barriers, and it rolls the country-club clock back 20 years.
Big Boi 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, make threats, make a lot of noise and are rejected.
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 banter amongst C-Note's crew is amusing and playful, and is cut together with real snap (Finesse Mitchell is the token stoner). 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.
"Who's Your Caddy?" is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, some nudity, language and drug material. Running time: 85 minutes.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com