Happy Gilmore 2 review

HAPPY GILMORE 2: 

ADAM SANDLER RETURNS TO THE COURSE IN MODERATELY FUNNY SEQUEL! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

NETFLIX

Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore 2

 

            Adam Sandler (50 First Dates, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Uncut Gems) is back on the golf course in Happy Gilmore 2, the much anticipated sequel to his 1996 comedy smash hit, Happy Gilmore. I won’t be the first to say that Sandler’s style of humor is pretty hit-or-miss especially in recent years, but the original Happy Gilmore is often considered one of his best comedies and a staple in the sports-comedy genre. 

            It wasn’t trying to be a game-changing comedy or anything like that, it’s just a dumb, funny movie that delivers on laughs while also balancing it out with a fair amount of heart. Like I said, Sandler is a mixed bag, but films like this, Anger Management, 50 First Dates, and The Wedding Singer best showcase his comedic talents. 

            After 2015’s Pixels which was a huge disaster, I started to distance myself from Adam Sandler movies with a couple of exceptions like Hotel Transylvania and Uncut Gems, but since Happy Gilmore is a film of his I speak fondly of, I decided to give the new sequel on Netflix a shot. Happy Gilmore 2 reunites Sandler with his onscreen nemesis, Christopher McDonald (Flubber, The Iron Giant, Hacks) this time with Kyle Newacheck (Workaholics, Murder Mystery, What We Do in the Shadows) behind the camera. 

            So, does this comedy sequel bring Adam Sandler back to his glory days? Not exactly, but I laughed a fair amount of times during my viewing. 

            I didn’t really have any expectations with this movie and while I can’t say it works entirely and often relies heavily on nostalgia for the first movie, I found the movie funny enough and it was neat seeing Sandler and McDonald again as their iconic characters. 

            The film is set eleven years after the first and follows hockey player turned golfer, Happy Gilmore (Sandler) who was once at the top of his game, but a stroke of bad luck plunges him back down to rock bottom. His wife, Virginia (Julie Bowen-ER, Multiplicity, Horrible Bosses; reprising her role from the first) was accidentally killed by a golf ball to the head (Yeah, they did the Zoolander 2 thing here!) and now he’s trying to pay for his daughter’s overseas ballet school so now Happy Gilmore has to get back on top by making his return to professional golf. 

            However, the game has changed drastically with a new form of golf known as Maxi Golf making its ways thus forcing Happy to make an unexpected alliance with his arch nemesis and shit-for-breakfast eater, Shooter McGavin (McDonald) in order to save traditional golf and get the money for his daughter’s ballet school. 

            The film also stars Benny Safdie (Licorice Pizza, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Oppenheimer) who also co-directed Sandler in Uncut Gems as Frank Manatee, Bad Bunny (F9, Bullet Train, Caught Stealing) as Oscar Mejias, Ben Stiller (Zoolander 1 and 2, Starsky & Hutch, Tropic Thunder) reprising his role as Hal L., Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Blink Twice) as Billy Jenkins, Lavell Crawford (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Ridiculous 6) as Slim Peterson, and Eminem (8 Mile, Funny People) as Donald Floyd Jr. 

            Overall, Happy Gilmore 2 is a sequel that gives exactly what it promises and doesn’t try to be anything more which might be enough for fans of the original film or Adam Sandler fans in general. I can’t say I found this film knee-slapping hilarious especially compared to the first, but there were some gags and jokes that made me laugh with probably my favorite being this fight between Sandler and Christopher McDonald when they meet again in a cemetery that shows all the characters and actors from the original that passed away including Carl Weathers AKA Chubbs Peterson which was both very funny and somehow touching at the same time. 

            Christopher McDonald in general is still hilarious as Shooter McGavin who I found to be the most consistently funny character in the film who suffered a mental breakdown after the last movie so McDonald gets to unleash his crazy side and I found myself smiling and laughing every time he was onscreen. Ben Stiller also reverts back to his Heavyweights and Dodgeball days as Sandler’s abusive leader of his alcoholic support group and like McDonald, delivers some great laughs in his amount of screen time. 

            The movie leans into absurdity a lot of the time with a more exaggerated version of golf compared to the first that reminded me of the Space Jam: A New Legacy version of basketball minus the video game part. Sometimes I was just entertained by how crazy this game of golf against these almost-bionic golfers got. 

            However, the film does fall into those Happy Madison traps that sometime work, but most of the time REALLY don’t. Grown men showing off their rear ends, fart jokes, toilet jokes, Rob Schneider looking for a paycheck, that kind of shit though I guess they were a little more restrained here compared to other Adam Sandler/Happy Madison projects and there were some genuine laughs in this movie. 

            The plot is pretty unoriginal and we’ve heard this kind of set-up dozens of times before (maybe even more). The superstar was once on the top of the world, then he sinks down to rock bottom, and now he needs to get his groove back and rise back to the top, Happy Gilmore 2 doesn’t add anything new to this and gives the exact formula you’d expect out of this premise. 

            I will give this film a lot of credit for bringing back the heart from Sandler’s earlier work as while I didn’t find everything in the movie funny, I was invested in Sandler returning to golf to pay for his daughter’s ballet school. Despite turning to alcoholism after his wife died and facing financial problems, Sandler’s Happy is trying his damnedest to be a good father for his children at various points of the film and there was a strong family dynamic to anchor it. 

            Happy Gilmore 2 is a downgrade from the original 1996 comedy classic and relies on a lot of nostalgia for the first movie (Even right down to recycling footage from it all the damn time), but fans of the original and Adam Sandler will likely find something to enjoy here. Personally, I’ll stick with the first Happy Gilmore but given that this was on Netflix for free and I did laugh a number of times during it, I didn’t feel like my time was wasted.