Par for the Course: HAPPY GILMORE 2

In 1996, Happy Gilmore told the story of a hockey player with anger issues who became an improbable golf star. Since then, we’re told at the start of Happy Gilmore 2, he won several more golf tournaments and had four kids with the love of his life. And it was all downhill from there. Now he’s a retired broke alcoholic single father who dreams of affording tuition for a fancy ballet school that’ll make his darling teen daughter’s dreams come true. The habit of legacy sequels ruining the lives of characters we last saw in a happy ending (think: Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Halloween, Indiana Jones…) can often seem a cruel way of resetting the stakes of a story. Giving Happy all this sadness gets the comedy plot rolling in a surprisingly low, reflective mood for all its insistent jocularity. It’s nonetheless predictable. If you think that his desperation will drive him back into a new lucrative golf tournament, you know the way these decades-late sequels go. What a difference three decades makes. 

The original movie was one of Adam Sandler’s first big hits, and is now something of a comedy classic, although at the time it was written off by critics as a louder, crasser, dumber brand of comedy. What arrived to some as a shock of the new is now a reflection of a style of moviemaking past. Time will do that. Yesterday’s young upstart is today’s old favorite. When big screen comedies are such a dying art that this surefire hit has been sent straight to streaming, it’s nice to see Sandler up to his reliable nonsense. His brand of salty and sweet comedy, more broad slapstick than clever wordplay, with shaggy plotting and cameos for his pals and a tendency to scream and flail and then smirkingly shrug into a sentimental finale, made early Sandler movies recognizably his own. Although in the middle of his career, they trended toward an excess of those qualities, some of his initial efforts have a neatly contained idea that reigns in his worst impulses. The sports’ movie structure Gilmore borrows and goofs on gives it a fine through line for its nonsense. And, against all odds, one could even care about this wacky character. 

The sequel, however, is definitely a latter day Sandler picture. It’s looser and shaggier than ever before, running nearly two hours with a meandering story lumbering from gag to gag. It has a pretty even hit-to-miss ratio. It can be amusing, but leans toward too much of not enough. It’s full of affection for its characters, tributes to late cast members and pals, and a love for Sandler’s wife and daughters, who get substantial roles. Some of Sandler’s comedies of late have successfully used that love of family to make warmer, sweeter movies in which he gets to play the charming dad, like in the crowded wedding comedy The Week Of or colorful teen comedy You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. To return to Happy Gilmore is to find a blending of his two modes, the earlier scrappy underdog eccentrics with wild crude set-pieces, grotesque supporting players, and wacky running gags, now with the lovable everyman father figure at the center. That’s what makes it so long and generously portioned. It has an enormous ensemble cast and lots of silly putting around. There's more than enough of everything. If you like famous people playing themselves, or a loopy caddy played by Bad Bunny (admittedly a highlight), or a mean waiter played by Travis Kelce, or a heckler played by Eminem, or an endless parade of Sandler regulars and SNL alum you’re going to get so, so much of it. No joke goes unrepeated. No opportunity for a flashback to the first movie is avoided. No old friend’s superfluous scene is cut out. Sandler is an affectionate Movie Star. He knows at this point that his fans just want to hang out with something familiar and here he serves it up over and over and over.