‘Happy Gilmore 2’ Review — A Bloated Cameo-Fest Full Of Callbacks With Enough Fresh Laughs To Make It Watchable
Everyone open their bibles to the book of Ecclesiastes 1:9 where it reads, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” Then, feel free to cast aside that anachronistic tome of mankind’s projected ego, and forget about it.
A new movie has risen from the stagnant waters of a fading industry that’s more about exploiting sentiment for profit than creating original art. A decaying realm where only our memories have numeral value, and innovation has been completely erased from their marketing strategy.
This barren landscape stretches from here to the start of the 21st century, teeming with the retreads of celebrated classics that reside in the hearts of audiences from across generations, but the only thing holding these baited nostalgia hooks together are their references to those classics, and nothing more. Only now, they’re targeting the movies that weren’t very good to begin with.
It’s a good chance that most boomers out there remember Adam Sandler’s reign of cinematic terror in the late ’90s. After an amazing five-year tenure on Saturday Night Live (as well as an entire slew of hilarious full-length albums), the comedy actor went on to star in some incredibly goofy (but occasionally funny) movies such as Billy Madison, The Waterboy, The Wedding Singer, and Big Daddy.
Lucky for us, the people at Netflix spared viewers the agony of seeing a sequel to those dated time capsules from the Happy Madison Productions catalogue, and gave them a continuation of one of Sandler’s least-worst features, Happy Gilmore.
It has been twenty-nine years since Happy defeated Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald) at the PGA Tour Championship, and saved his grandma’s house from certain foreclosure. Winning five more championships, he became a golf superstar with plenty of gold jackets to spare, and he even married Virginia (Julie Bowen).
The couple had five kids together, but then tragedy strikes when she’s cracked in the forehead by one of Happy’s golf balls, and dies from her injury. Crippled by grief and guilt, Happy puts down his golf clubs, and picks up the bottle.
Years pass, and Happy is a drunken mess who works at a local supermarket — after he squanders his fortune and loses his grandma’s house — but he still finds creative ways to hide the booze that he’s drinking all day. This changes when his youngest daughter, Vienna (played by Sandler’s actual youngest daughter, Sunny), is accepted into a four-year ballet school in Paris.
Galvanized by the $300,000 tuition, and little encouragement by the garage-dwelling golf legend John Daley, Happy Gilmore throws on his Bruins jersey, and heads back to the golf course.
Standing in his way is Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie), the CEO of Maxi Energy Drink and of a new league called Maxi Golf. This is an exaggerated version of LIV Golf that aims to make the sport a little more interesting for younger viewers. Instead of eighteen holes, for example, there are seven, and a shot clock is added to weed out slow players.
When Happy rejects Manatee’s offer to join his golf revolution, and tosses him into a lobster tank, the salty entrepreneur challenges him to a golf tournament that will pit the top five players from both leagues against each other to see if tradition still has what it takes to hold back this ‘extreme’ makeover.
This movie has more actor cameos than Deadpool & Wolverine, and enough appearances by sports legends to give viewers the impression that they’ve accidentally switched on the ESPY awards.
Returning from the first film is Ben Stiller as former retirement home orderly Hal L, Kevin Nealon as Gary “Psycho” Potter, Robert Smigel as the defenestrated IRS agent turned lawyer, and Christopher McDonald reprises his role as Shooter McGavin in a touching redemption arc that manages to work.
Then there are special appearances by Happy Madison regulars Steve Buscemi, Blake Clark, John Farley, Nick Swardson, and Rob Schneider plays a dwarf who rides a pony through the movie’s new “Happy Place” fantasy.
Newcomers to the series are Jon Lovitz, Kym Whitley, Breaking Bad’s Lavell Crawford as the son of Chubbs Peterson (played by the late Carl Weathers), Haley Joel Osment, Eminem as the son of the “Jackass!” heckler from the first movie (played by the late Joe Flaherty), and a show-stealing performance by rapper Bad Bunny as Happy’s mentally unstable caddie, Oscar.
Most of this movie is comprised of callbacks to the first one. The same jokes are recycled anew, some iconic scenes are repeated, and they’re not nearly as good as the first time you watched them. However, a few strands of freshness are threaded through this nearly two-hour nostalgia trip that are undeniably funny, and show that Sandler’s humor has matured since the days of straddling wooden broomsticks to depict parts of his anatomy.
It also continues the 58-year old actor’s streak of films where he laments his steady progression into old age (which one could argue started with Judd Apatow’s even more bloated Funny People from 2009), and it’s a reminder to everyone that we’re only a few holes behind him on that withering golf course called ‘Life.’
Happy Gilmore 2 is the interesting amalgamation of rehash, redemption, and enough hilarious moments for it to just barely qualify as a worthy sequel, but with a few parts that make it surpass the first golf outing, and this is coming from someone who was looking for any reason to trash it.
Happy Gilmore 2 (2025), Netflix
PROS
- Genuinely funny moments.
- Mature slapstick humor.
- Creative liquor containers.
- Steve Buscemi cameo.
- Bad Bunny performance.
- Classic rock soundtrack.
CONS
- Long runtime.
- Endless callbacks to first movie.
- Badly timed jokes.
- Endless callbacks to first movie.
- Brief appearance by Eric André.
- Endless callbacks to first movie.
- The sport of golfing.
