I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve rewatched Happy Gilmore, though it can’t beat my Little Nicky record – for some reason I really like that Deep South joke. But comedy sequels rarely surpass the original, sometimes they’re not even very good, so I wasn’t sure what kind of product we would get with Happy Gilmore 2. The sequel is silly, goofy and really stupid – in a nutshell, it’s everything you expect from an Adam Sandler movie. It should suffice if you’re just looking to be entertained and want to put something on that the whole family can vibe with. Unless your family’s into like high-brow art, then maybe it might be better to stay away.
Happy Gilmore 2 moves at breakneck speed, which is necessary if you don’t want viewers lingering on the mess for too long. We move quickly through the story beats and various cameos, so even if a joke or gag falls flat there’s something else coming around the corner to keep us occupied. Every single time there’s a callback to a character from the first movie, we get a quick flashback to remind us, which starts to grate the more it goes on. The movie’s basically the equivalent of that Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme. I wish the movie trusted us more to make the connections ourselves instead of trying to spoon feed us these references. There are also guest cameos from actors/celebrities like Margaret Qualley, Travis Kelce and Eminem; the latter I didn’t even recognise until the movie was over but hey he was pretty funny.
Happy Gilmore 2 can’t beat the charm and heart of the first film. With Happy’s grandma and wife out of the picture, most of the emotional heavy lifting then falls to Happy’s children. However, the script doesn’t really allow us to sit in these family moments because of how quickly it moves, which is a shame because there’s good chemistry between Sandler and his faux family. It helps that Happy’s daughter Vienna is played by Sandler own daughter Sunny; the father-daughter chemistry is effortless and their moments together bring a certain sparkle to the movie.
Sandler’s Happy still has anger management issues, he’s also a raging alcoholic after the passing of his wife Virginia (Julie Bowen). Sandler’s not reinventing the wheel or anything, but this kind of silly humour is his wheelhouse, and his line delivery still makes me guffaw even though the performance isn’t quite on par with the original. Christopher McDonald returns as Shooter McGavin, and the man is as entertaining as ever, whether he’s trying to eat a stack of pancakes or engaging in fisty cuffs with Happy in a graveyard.
As is the case with some sequels, the villain of the original joins forces with the protagonist to fight an even bigger villain. Happy and Shooter thus become unlikely allies as they take on Benny Safdie’s energy drink mogul Frank Manatee, who’s trying to make golf more exciting by designing a new version of it called Maxi golf. I was expecting more from the Maxi golf tournament, but this is actually where the film falls off the rails – the whole tournament is too over the top and ludicrous that it’s difficult to be invested. When the story is focused on Happy and his family, it sorta works.
The movie has some great scene stealing moments from John Daly and Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler in particular has stellar comedic timing – who wouldn’t want to stay in jail longer just to eat some chicken fingers? The only disappointment is Ben Stiller, who was great in the original movie but strangely out of place in this one. He didn’t feel quite as menacing as before, and I do wish his role had been more of a cameo so I wouldn’t have such a sacrilegious take on his performance.
Happy Gilmore 2 is just a silly good time. It’s not the best golf comedy movie there ever was – I don’t think even the original can claim that – but it’s good fun.
REVIEW SCORE: 3/5
