Consider this my public retraction for privately telling everyone “Happy Gilmore 2” would join the pantheon of unwatchable sequels and possibly go down as one of the worst movies ever made. I was on set, circumstantially, for an hour of its filming, and the prediction was extrapolated from watching one scene go through a dozen takes that felt like a hundred. It was the part where a surgically enhanced punk rock “golfer” from the rival league lunges to twist Rory McIlroy’s nipples in a pre-match staredown, and Bryson DeChambeau steps in to exhort, “Don’t twist my boy’s titties; those are my titties!”
To my defense, the final cut revealed zero additional understory or relationship (romantic?) between these characters to make that line funny beyond the repetition of a naughty word. As I exited past the tractor trailers teeming with gear, people and catering, I appreciated better how $150 million is lit on fire.
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Thirty years removed from his breakout heroics, Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) has become a middle-aged amalgam of John Daly (long-hitting, fan-favorite, blue collar, financial struggles tied to addiction) and Tiger Woods (long-hitting, fan-favorite, dominant winner, drastic swings to his public image tied to addiction). The former revels in the winks, playing himself from the seat of an overstuffed recliner with enough lines to qualify for a supporting role. Unsurprisingly, the latter is the conspicuous absence amid scores of cameos that include everyone from Collin Morikawa to Rickie Fowler to Jack Nicklaus to Travis Kelce. With a general audience in mind, credit to the writers for choosing the game’s two most widely familiar lives over which to write their jokes.
In Gilmore’s comeback, he joins Shooter McGavin (insanity’s descent fiercely played by Christopher McDonald) and a team of golf stars to battle a rebel league that’s a naked mix between LIV Golf and professional wrestling. With real-life defectors such as DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Bubba Watson cast as traditionalists, the jokes smartly play to the fat of the green. Antipathy toward the upstarts is directed less at the concept and more toward a clueless tech-bro commissioner with bad breath who bears zero resemblance to Greg Norman, Yasir Al-Rumayyan or Scott O’Neil. While convention inevitably wins, the PGA Tour is mocked by a rousing rally of solidarity among its players at a dinner that never happened. Getting image-conscious top-10 players to actively participate in their own rebuke is walking a comedic tightrope. Bravo.
Sprinkled amid a lot of slapstick is subtle golf gold, too, like the casually obnoxious pro Billy Jenkins (Haley Joel Osment) whispering the swing tip “Xanax arms” to himself, or the cheerful but haggard former-player-turned-reporter Gary Potter (Kevin Nealon) earnestly asking Scottie Scheffler, “If you’re the best, does that make everyone else the worst?” In one line, our too often grasping 24/7 media world is sympathetically skewered.
The real reason “Happy Gilmore 2” is a success lies, of course, with Sandler’s ability to delight as a man-child. Secretly, don’t we all wish we could respond to life’s complexities by throwing lawyers through glass doors? The capstone of Gilmore’s plot-initiating financial ruin is a lawsuit from beating up the repossessor of his car (“I didn’t know I had to renew the lease”). Lovingly, Gilmore tells his four grown sons at dinner, hockey players all, “We fight in the basement, not at the table.”
I rolled the dice on the PG-13 rating and watched “Happy Gilmore 2” with my son who is 7. Bo was gripped until the credits and insisted we rewind the montage where Gilmore’s recovery shots ricochet into his head and “weiner” (Bo’s word). When two of his friends were over one day shortly after, the boys took turns in the backyard with a wiffle-ball bat between their legs pantomiming the phallic thrust demonstrated by Gilmore’s sons with the tools of their various wage-earning jobs. Later, aware that I played golf, his friends asked me to teach them. I almost shed a tear.
None had seen the original “Happy Gilmore.” That’s why the sequel is a smash (not to mention opening to $40 million at the box office). For a new generation, the game exists. I’ll bear any number of weak nipple jokes for that.
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