Happy Gilmore was such a seminal film for Adam Sandler that he named his production company after it. The title provides half of Happy Madison, Sandler’s company that has been calling Netflix home for a decade, the other half contributed by another beloved 1990s Sandler comedy, Billy Madison.
It could be argued things have never gotten better for Sandler in those 30 years since Madison. He’s become far more successful, one of the most bankable comic actors of those three decades, and he’s had several dalliances with critical acclaim for dramatic roles. But outside of another 1990s comedy, The Wedding Singer, Sandler has never had a signature comedy like those first few.
So it certainly makes sense to go back to the well with Happy Gilmore in the form of a sequel, and in fact, we might reasonably have found ourselves here much earlier, given that Sandler has been providing multiple comedies a year for Netflix since The Ridiculous Six in 2015. But a 30th anniversary (actually, 29th) always makes a good opportunity to revisit IP, especially nowadays, and Gilmore fans will be glad to find that Happy Gilmore 2 provides much the same shaggy charm as the original.
Sandler’s titular golfer went on to great things after his initial breakout, despite unconventional methods involving hockey sticks and jerseys, an outgrowth of his origins as a bruiser on the ice. He won a number of additional gold jackets to put his name up alongside the many greats who make cameos here, such as Jack Nicklaus, Fred Couples and Scottie Scheffler – the latter more a supporting role than a cameo, revealing quite a fitness for comedy.
Then on an errant drive off his own driver, his wife, Virginia (Julie Bowen), met her early demise, leaving Happy in a descent to alcoholism despite his responsibilities to five children, four boys and at last a girl. Those kids grew up okay, no thanks to Happy, so committed to his alcohol that he’d stash it in hidden chambers in all the everyday objects within arm’s reach. But it was really an assault charge on the man repossessing his car that left him penniless, working in a grocery store, having forfeited the home he inherited from his grandmother.
Never fear, reader. Things get happier for Happy. When his daughter – played by Sandler’s own daughter, Sunny – is recommended for a ballet school in Paris that will cost $75,000 per year, Happy realises his path back to financial independence may go through golf, even though he laid down his clubs for good after Virginia passed. His need isn’t enough to succumb to the recruitment of a crass bro, Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie), who is launching a new golf league with new rules and extreme greens, as well as biologically enhanced players. When he does go back on tour to earn the necessary cash to send his daughter to school, he and the other greats must face off against Manatee and his crew in order to save conventional golf as we know it.
Happy Gilmore 2 closely follows a familiar playbook for feeding our nostalgia, bringing back as many cast members from the first movie as possible, even ones small enough that director Kyle Newacheck includes footage from the original just to remind us. We require no reminder of Shooter McGavin, the first film’s villain, still played by Christopher McDonald, who has spent 30 years in an institution after his loss to Happy. Then there’s Ben Stiller in the role of Hal L., the abusive orderly in Happy’s grandmother’s care home. The way these characters are shoehorned in doesn’t always work, but then again, that’s only according to a conventional definition of “work.” All these really need to do is bring a smile to our face, and that they do.
Happy Gilmore 2 is funny in ways you might expect and ways you might not. Sandler himself is more of an anchor than a real comedic engine here – an anchor in the sense of providing the project its centre, not weighing it down. Actually some of the silliest moments are related to the real golfers, as when one continues to interrupt a banquet speech with “That’s what she said!” at inopportune times. On the surface, that seems tired, as that joke was driven into the ground on The Office more than a decade ago. When you get a look at the glee on the face of these golfers moonlighting in comedy, it underscores the delightful absurdity of the moment in a way that produces extreme giggling.
There are a lot of unexpected faces here that contribute to the comedy, both with their previously unknown abilities, and their very endorsement of the project overcoming any potential scepticism in the audience. One good example is Benny Safdie, known first and foremost as a director of independent films, then more recently as an actor who usually plays dramatic roles. In fact, Safdie directed Sandler in his own most celebrated dramatic role in Uncut Gems. That he’s on board as this film’s villain shows his eagerness to participate in the silliness, and he does so with aplomb, co-villaining with the equally game former child actor Haley Joel Osment, himself more of a comedy regular. Their disreputable attempt to give golf a douchebag makeover provides fertile ground for expanding the Happy Gilmore world, when the writers could have just gone for a Happy Gilmore-Shooter McGavin redux. In fact, McGavin’s role will surprise some viewers, in a good way.
Happy Gilmore 2 is not surprising in most aspects, but it doesn’t have to be. All it has to do is place us back in Sandler’s world of screaming golf hotheads, which is a lot more of a delightful place to spend time than that sounds. We’re usually right to be sceptical of the blatant flogging of popular IP, but we also understand what kind of risk averse Hollywood we’re living in right now. It turns out we need Happy’s hollering more right now than we might have thought we could.
Happy Gilmore 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.