As I’ve briefly written previously, Adam Sandler came to prominence in the early 1990s mostly through his success as part of the cast of Saturday Night Live. Like many, he was able to leverage this to transition to film which began with a few supporting roles in films like Coneheads and Airheads before starring in Billy Madison in 1995. The following year he starred in Happy Gilmore which was even more successful and which has led to mostly continued success up to the present. Happy Gilmore was the first film I remember seeing him in on VHS as a teenager and I’m sure this is true for many.
Both Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore had a very similar formula and Sandler would continue to repeat this in most of his films going forward. Generally speaking, Sandler plays a sympathetic loser (often with some special gift or advantage), that he uses to succeed invariably with a supportive female love-interest. While many of these films were even more successful than his first two major successes, I would say none have ever bettered these two films.
There are films that vary this formula a little, such as the romantic comedies 50 First Dates and Just Go With It but the essentials remain the same. As he got older and got married, he started portraying a family man instead but this was more a product of his age. He has occasionally also demonstrated more dramatic talents in films like Punch-Drunk Love and more sentimental films like Reign Over Me but his most successful films are his comedies.
What is strange is that despite how formulaic these films are, there have been no sequels except for the ensemble comedy Grown Ups and more recently a sequel to the Netflix exclusive Murder Mystery alongside Jennifer Aniston. So it was something of a surprise to see him go back to make a sequel to what most would consider his best comedy film: Happy Gilmore.
When I say it is a surprise, I mean it only in the sense that Sandler has done so few throughout his film career. It isn’t surprising given more recent trends with unnecessary sequels to films decades later happening frequently as I lamented in my review of Top Gun: Maverick which was one of the only good examples. Most of these sequels are pointless, self-referential re-treads. The trailers for Happy Gilmore 2 suggested it was going to be much the same and after watching it, it does and also doesn’t.
The film begins much as the first with Happy telling his story since the first with him marrying his love interest Virginia Venit (Julie Bowen) and having five children with her. His beloved grandma has died but they live in the house he saved for her in the original film. We learn in the same monologue that Gilmore accidently killed Venit when she is hit by a golf ball he had driven; much like his father is killed by a hockey puck in the opening of the first film. This leads to him giving up golf and taking up alcoholism which results in his losing his grandma’s house and living in a much smaller dwelling with his now motherless children.
The first problem then is the tonal clash as while his ice hockey worshiping father being killed as a spectator can be darkly humorous, it is less humorous when it is a husband accidently killing his own wife and the mother of his five children. The audience didn’t know Happy’s father but Virginia was an established character in the first film. It would be more understandable if Bowen was unable for whatever reason to return but she is in the film’s opening and appears in flashbacks so I see no reason why it was necessary to kill her off — especially as this is played for laughs and this is not done to introduce a new love-interest for Happy which makes her death all the more pointless.
With Happy back to square one with five mouths to feed, he still needs the further incentive to pay the tuition for his daughter to attend a ballet academy in France for him to put down the booze and pick up his clubs again. The stakes really couldn’t be much lower. Conveniently, he has also forgotten how to play golf and even pull off his famous drive which sees him struggling against some young amateurs in the early part of the film. He also has to attend group therapy for alcoholics with Ben Stiller’s despotic aged care orderly Hal now working as a counsellor. He is the same character and now punishes alcoholics by having them work on his house as a form of therapy instead of running a workhouse for the elderly.
Carl Weathers played Chubbs Peterson in the first film, a professional golfer that lost his hand to an alligator which ended his career. He mentors and trains Happy in the first film before dying in comical circumstances — that does fit the tone. Weathers has since died as have Richard Kiel, Joe Flaherty and Bob Barker who all had a hand in some of the film’s most amusing moments. That these actors have died hasn’t stopped their scenes being recycled with the son of Chubbs appearing inexplicably with two wooden hands. Mr. Larson played by Kiel also has his son appear as a supportive but physically menacing fan of Gilmore. And Eminem appears as Flaherty’s “Jackass” heckler’s son. Not even the grave can prevent Sandler recycling jokes from the first film and even the crazy old lady from the nursing home appears on a gravestone in one scene. The director wasn’t confident people would even remember most of these parts of a ninety minute film and flashbacks are frequently shown as if to remind the audience about things they found funny in 1996.
The only really new aspect to the film is Maxi Golf, a new tournament inspired by Gilmore’s antics in the first. This is headed by Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie) who becomes Happy’s primary antagonist as Gilmore competes in this tournament for both his daughter’s ballet tuition and to “save” traditional golf. Christopher McDonald’s Shooter McGavin had gone to a mental hospital after the events of the first film which I did think was funny. Although the trailers and his early appearances set him up to return as an antagonist, he ends up becoming a reluctant friend who also competes against the Maxi players. It is Billy Jenkins played by Haley Joel Osment that is Gilmore’s primary challenger on course and Osment was honestly pretty funny in his role. I hope all of the above seems convoluted because that is how it was watching the film for the most part.
The film is representative of the worst excesses seen in most Sandler projects especially of late. It is full of references to older films, cameos from sports stars, celebrities and comedians and very little that is clever or new. I had assumed the film was just going to rehash the first but it is worse than a straight rehash would have been. There are still some amusing moments and even some ideas that could have worked had they been developed more. As a film though, this is not a patch on the often crass but still endearing original and I don’t recommend it.