Adam Sandler’s Happy Hasn’t Gotten Better With Age

It’s been 29 years since Adam Sandler hit it big with “Happy Gilmore,” a blast of fresh comedy for those of a certain age. I happened to be one of them — well, almost. I watched “Happy Gilmore” a couple years after it came out and loved it. It was sweet and funny and a little bit naughty in all the right ways. Sandler was hilarious on “Saturday Night Live,” and he was even funnier in the movie: a comic persona for a new generation. I saw a lot of Sandler’s early movies, but around the time of “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” I stopped going. There was something desperate and unattractive about a lot of the movies he started putting out, so more recently I’ve had to consider whether an Adam Sandler movie is really worth it, and more often than not I’ve decided against them.

Now comes “Happy Gilmore 2.” My question was which Sandler would we get: the sweet, but kind of violent one from the first “Happy Gilmore” (here’s a recap, for those who need it) or the less lovable one from his recent movies? Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say it’s more the latter than the former. While there are some things in this movie that are funny, especially call-backs to the first movie and Sandler interacting with the people that play his kids (the girl actually is his kid, Sunny Sandler, although the four boys — Ethan Cutkosky, Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Philip Fine Schneider, and Conor Sherry — are not), overall this didn’t give me the zip that I had after I watched the original.

On the one hand, it was disappointing. After all, to not have another great experience when you loved the first movie is hard (but not surprising, perhaps). On the other hand, people will be watching this on Netflix in the comfort of their own homes. And for those purposes, this movie is … perfectly fine. It doesn’t reach the heights of some other Netflix movies (for a recent example of a great Netflix flick, check out “K-Pop Demon Hunters”), but it’s certainly no “Bright.” It floats in the middle of the pack, and it’s a great selection for folding laundry or playing a game on your phone while watching.

Though I can’t tell you much about the story because of Netflix’s request regarding spoilers, I can tell you that “Happy Gilmore 2” writers Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler do backflips to get the character into a low enough place where he has to get back to golf. Happy and Virginia (Julie Bowen) now have five kids and seem on top of the world when a tragedy strikes. As a result, Happy starts drinking and stops golfing. By the time his daughter has decided she wants to go to ballet school, which will cost a nice chunk of change, Happy’s broke and working at a grocery store.

He decides to try to get his life together and enter a golf tournament to make some serious money, and he surprises everyone by coming in sixth. But he’s squandered his daughter’s tuition money because he’s been fined for bad behavior on the course. Not to worry though, he’s done well enough to enter a competition with a new golf league spearheaded by Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie) called Maxi Golf. Happy is appalled by the new league, as are the other players he enters the competition with — including Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald), who is along for the ride too. Now Happy has two goals: getting the money for his daughter and bringing Maxi Golf down. It’s a lot, but more is not always better when it comes to movies, and the story overall has diminishing returns.

The sequel is also inferior to the original because of the enormous amount of celebrity cameos in this movie. There were celebrity cameos in the first one too, of course — Bob Barker was particularly memorable — but ultimately they seemed to serve the movie instead of the other way around. Here, the cameos can be excessive, especially the enormous number of golfers that appear. It’s no surprise that golfers wanted in on this movie, and a few would have been fine, but at my count there are 19 pro golfers that appear (as compared to two in the original). Plus people like musicians Post Malone and Eminem and NFL player Travis Kelce are just there for funsies. As a result, the real impressive feat is that Adam Sandler and director Kyle Newacheck found a place for them all. 

I’m sure they all had fun, but there are too many people here in cameo roles. It’s almost like Sandler is bragging about how many famous friends he has now or that the first movie was so popular that all these people want to be in the second one. Either way, it takes away from the proceedings and causes us to focus on the cameos more than the substance of the film. That’s unfortunate.

Overall though, “Happy Gilmore 2” is harmless entertainment. It’s a pipe dream of a movie, even more so than the first one, with improbable scenes galore. But I can’t be too mad at it. It’s not a good movie, but it’s not that bad for a streaming flick either. If you liked the first one, give this one a try. It won’t give you the same warm and fuzzy feeling as the original, but you could do worse.

“Happy Gilmore 2” is available to stream on Netflix.