The film holds a 75% approval rating at popular review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 38 reviews, with the consensus: "Though unabashedly crude and juvenile, Caddyshack nevertheless scores with its classic slapstick, unforgettable characters, and endlessly quotable dialogue."[11] Christopher Null gave the film four stars out of five, and wrote, "They don't make 'em like this anymore... The plot wanders around the golf course and involves a half-dozen elements, but if you simply dig the gopher, the caddy, and the Dangerfield, you're not going to be doing half bad."[12] Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "Caddyshack feels more like a movie that was written rather loosely, so that when shooting began there was freedom - too much freedom - for it to wander off in all directions in search of comic inspiration."[13] Dave Kehr, in his review for the Chicago Reader, wrote, "The first-time director, Harold Ramis, can't hold it together: the picture lurches from style to style (including some ill-placed whimsy with a gopher puppet) and collapses somewhere between sitcom and sketch farce."[14]
Nevertheless, the film slowly gained a massive cult following in the years after its release,[15] including in the golf world. Tiger Woods has said[16] that it is his favorite film, so much so that he played Spackler in an American Express commercial based on the film, and many of the film's quotes have entered the lexicon of pop culture.[17]
Ramis notes in the DVD documentary that TV Guide had originally given the film two stars (out of four) when it began showing on cable television in the early 1980s, but over time, the rating had gone up to three stars. He himself says he "can barely watch it. All I see are a bunch of compromises and things that could have been better" such as the poor swings of everyone save O'Keefe.[18]
In 2007, Taylor Trade Publishing released The Book of Caddyshack, an illustrated paperback retrospective of the movie, with cast and crew Q&A interviews. The book was written by Scott Martin.
Denmark was the only place outside the US/Canada where Caddyshack was initially a hit. The distributor had cut 20 minutes from the movie to emphasize Bill Murray's role.[19]