‘Happy Gilmore 2’ (2025)
Nepotism abounds in the surprisingly tight sequel to the one-note 1996 comedy about a failed hockey player with anger issues turned pro golfer with anger issues. The success of that film made former SNLer Adam Sandler a household name and box office force to be reckoned with (and the run since has been long and profitable). Of those family ties, “Happy 2” features Sandler’s wife (Jackie), two daughters (Sunny and Sadie) and mother (Judy) in small parts. Loyal to the calendar, we’re 30 years out, Happy Gilmore (Sandler) is married to golf tour publicist Virginia Venit (Julie Bowen) and now has a brood of four: Hanson-esque hockey hooligan boys and a lone daughter, Vienna (Sunny Sandler), who wants to go to ballet school in Paris. Before we settle in, Virginia exits the picture and Happy, distraught, starts boozing wildly. The slide into financial ruin and derelict dad-dom is meteoric. That said, things are arguably worse for old foe Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald, funny and sinister as always), locked up in an insane asylum. Nearly every page from the original gets a nod, including the sadistic opportunist Hal (Ben Stiller, sporting a massive handlebar ’stache) who held Happy’s grandmother under duress as a maniacal nurse at her living facility, and here has moved on to running an AA-adjacent recovery program that Happy is ordered to dry out in. Needless to say, the only way to save the house and send Vienna to pirouette school (he needs $300,000 and then some), is golf. Added is Benny Safdie, co-director of Sandler’s “Uncut Gems” (2019), as the smarmy head of an upstart golf league called Maxi Golf (like Liv Golf on neon-infused crack) who wants to challenge the pro-golf tour, and Haley Joel Osment as the top pro on the tour – and subsequent Maxi Golf defector – who can drive the ball farther than Happy because of a radical hip ligament surgery. Many of today’s top players, including Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau, appear in the film, as well as old schoolers Lee Trevino, Fred Couples and legend Jack Nicklaus, who, when asked by a waiter (Travis Kelce, slick and sassy) what he wants to drink, says, lemonade and ice tea. The waiter pauses and asks Nicklaus if he’s not Arnold Palmer (cue rimshot). It’s a shaggy-dog laugh fest that pays astute homage (Sandler and original scribe Tim Herlihy doing a nice stitching job, plotwise) to what came before while expanding it. The best might be party-hearty golfer John Daly with a Santa beard as Happy’s next-door neighbor who’s forever in his PJs and sucking on nips. A surprising and unlikely above-par revelation, this “Happy” beats the cover off the old ball while notching a few new spins and a dizzying array of hip cameos.
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