Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Travis Kelce, Bad Bunny, and Adam Sandler walk into a country club. This specific high-powered cocktail of superstars can only be found in Happy Gilmore 2, a dizzying carnival ride of a comedy that’s fun, exhausting and, occasionally, oddly beautiful. Sandler and Tim Herlihy have once again written the script, and while there are some solid new jokes in this sequel, its greatest fault is that nostalgia for the 1996 original gets overplayed in needless rehashing and an onslaught of cameos.
Sandler is back in his Bruins jersey as the titular golf champion, now hobbled by tragedy. This time around his greatest foe is not anger, but, in a surprisingly earnest move, sadness. He has descended into severe alcoholism, thrown away his career, lost his grandma’s house (again), and – thanks to a series of great props – turned nearly every object you can imagine into a secret flask. But when his daughter (played ably by Sandler’s actual daughter, Sunny) earns a spot at a prestigious and expensive ballet school, Happy’s motivated to get back in the game.
This fatherly crusade quickly spirals, as a golf cart collision (starring Margaret Qualley, Eric André, and Please Don’t Destroy’s Martin Herlihy – a Letterboxd power-user’s dream blunt rotation) lands Happy in court-ordered substance abuse counseling led by none other than the sadistic ex-nursing home attendant Hal (Ben Stiller). Meanwhile, a douchey sports drink CEO named, excellently, Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie) is trying to change golf forever, and Happy’s old nemesis Shooter McGavin (played again by Christopher McDonald, an absolute gem) is in his Joker era.
All that setup is solidly enjoyable, even as Happy Gilmore 2 regularly interrupts itself with clip show-style references to the original. But once the big showdown against Manatee tees off, the callbacks and cameos get to be too much. In addition to those already mentioned, this movie features Post Malone, Guy Fieri, Eminem, Cam’ron, Haley Joel Osment, Ken Jennings, Lavell Crawford, and Hot Ones host Sean Evans. (There are also a slew of golf pros.) Characters – or progeny of characters – from the first movie are nearly as numerous. There’s planning delightful surprises for your viewers, and then there’s overloading your movie with so many recognizable faces that they distract from the story and the comedy. In Happy Gilmore 2, whose humor is distinctly less innovative than that of Happy Gilmore, this sleight of hand feels like an intentional move to cover up its shortcomings.
There are jokes in Happy Gilmore 2 that feel in the spirit of the first movie – like giving the new villain halitosis and punctuating his first appearance with no less than 50 heads of garlic – but this sequel is way too content to recycle its predecessor’s punchlines. And don’t worry if you forget to rewatch Happy Gilmore before it leaves Netflix on July 31, because Happy Gilmore 2 sets up nearly every callback with footage pulled directly from it. This, coupled with a cameo list that feels like it was crafted, at least in part, by your YouTube-addicted nephew, makes it seem like Happy Gilmore 2 isn’t here to introduce a cult classic to a new generation – it’s here to replace it with something that the whole family can go into cold. Get your bag, Sandler, but Happy Gilmore was great because of its original, endlessly quotable humor. Happy Gilmore 2 feels a bit like its reanimated, Diet Pepsi-endorsed corpse.
This isn’t an entirely cynical exercise, though. No matter how many butts are bared (at least six) it’s apparent that its screenwriters have grown up a bit in the last three decades. There’s more heart in this story, which is ultimately one of recovery, and there are a few beautiful scenes to match. We the Animals cinematographer Zak Mulligan somehow took this gig, and he composes shots that hit as hard as Happy’s backswing. One in particular, during a nighttime scene where Happy talks to fellow golf outcast Jim Daly, has perhaps the most gorgeous lighting to ever grace a Happy Madison film.
I’m sure that Happy Gilmore 2 will please fans content to be merely reminded of its predecessor, but more discerning devotees are unlikely to appreciate its ratio of old to new material, and those out of the pop culture know will be at a loss for who many of these people are. In some ways, this is one of Sandler and Herlihy’s most mature movies, but there will be a lot of other stuff vying for your attention. Some of it is novel, some of it nostalgic, and some genuinely funny. The rest is just Sandler flexing his contacts list.
