A bit more of a review, or rather, a bit more details of what I didn't like.
I think the over-riding thing is that I felt like the storyline was disjointed. I understand that they wanted to tell the stories of: Augusta caddies, Scottish caddies, the Evans scholarship, PGA Tour caddies… the origin of caddying… and is that about it? Anyway, they wanted to tell those stories, but it did so in a very disorganized way. The Augusta caddies thing seemed to keep popping back up, rather than being a segment. I can understand that there are probably two ways to do this stuff - very, very segmented or having a thread weaving through a bunch of very small stories. This didn't do either, and as such, it felt like we kept getting not enough of much of one story and then switching over to another for a less-than-full meal there.
I don't know what the story was, the general tone. "Caddies" you could say, but what about them? The subtitle is "The Caddie's Long Walk" which implies either the history of caddying, caddying throughout time, or the difficulties of caddying (how hard a job it is)… or something like that. But I felt like that theme came in tiny doses, almost accidentally. There were scenes of some Scottish caddies sitting around telling jokes that weren't that funny and seemed almost completely out of place. A few of the caddies in those scenes were interviewed, but they were tiny vignettes - we never really got to know one of them. One walked beside a graveyard at Ballybunion, early in the film, but then he was dropped as a character shortly after we understood "he likes caddying, he meets people from all over, and he plans to keep on doing it."
For example, though I like Rick Reilly, I don't think he was ever really a caddie, and he was clearly used as a "name" guy who could tell a story. But even his use in the movie felt out of place. He just told a few jokes, basically… but why? Why not have a caddie tell the jokes? Or Bill Murray (the narrator)?
The one shining part of the film WAS Murray's narration. For a guy like him to take the reserved tone he took, it was good. Yet again then I'm reminded of the part where he appeared IN the film, which also felt out of place: he talks about how "the money got out of hand" when caddies started making $4.50. But why? Why not talk more about Bill Murray, Caddie at Large?
Disjointed. That might be the best word to describe the film IMO.
If you can appreciate the quick vignettes, and the one-off stuff that leads to nowhere, the film can be enjoyable. I didn't particularly enjoy it. Nor did the person I was with. If we're the only two who feel similarly, I'm cool with that.