Why Happy Gilmore 2 Surprised Me: The Unexpected Workout for Your Funny Bone and Fitness Mojo
So, what’s the also-58-year-old Happy Gilmore been up to since the events of the last film? Well, he enjoys the life of a sports legend (right down to faux SNL appearances featuring a de-aged Sandler), until a wayward drive kills his wife, Virginia (Julie Bowen). He falls into a drunken spiral and quits golf—until his daughter, Vienna (Sunny Sandler) needs money to go to ballet school. Cue the training montage, Big Bad (played by Benny Safdie, who channels Ben Stiller’s Dodgeball villain to brilliant effect), and bit roles from a murderers’ row of Sandler associates, old and new: John Daly, Marcello Hernandez, Bad Bunny, Nick Swardson, Kevin Nealon, and many more. Of course, this road leads him to his old foe Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald, who hasn’t missed a beat). Eventually, in a ripped-from-the-sports-headlines plot, Gilmore must defeat an upstart golf league that thinks the sport is so boring that it needs obstacles and a shot clock.
Did we need Happy Gilmore 2? No, we absolutely did not. Am I happy that it exists? Absolutely. While coming nowhere near the heights and ingenuity of its predecessor, Happy Gilmore 2 is still a blast, with every cameo tuned directly into Sandler’s comedic frequency. Old-timers Steve Buscemi, Stiller, and Nealon make the most of their appearances. But it’s the newcomers—Bad Bunny, Hernandez, Margaret Qualley, and especially Daly—who seem to have immediately understood the Sandler-verse’s blend of maximalism, deadpan delivery, slapstick comedy, and a dash of gross-out humor. Even the best player on the PGA Tour right now, Scottie Scheffler, nails his gags—especially a wink-wink moment that I won’t spoil for you golf loyalists.
As per usual with a Sandler-sanctioned story, you don’t have to squint terribly hard past the recurring bad-breath gags to see where the actor’s heart is at nowadays. (Aside from, you know, the opportunity to enlist the services of what feels like every living golf legend.) The actor has two daughters who are not only in this film, but are teenagers in flying-the-coop territory—and you can tell the man has fatherhood on his mind. Beyond his usual Sandlerian humor, the actor has played quite a few complicated fathers—look no further than Big Daddy, which this writer just so happens to believe is his best film. Happy Gilmore is no different. He also just so happens to be the father of teen children, and we see him go through legitimately serious struggles—including alcoholism and the death of their mother—to give his kids a better life. As always, it’s a testament to Sandler’s all-time dramedic chops that he can pivot between recovering alcoholic and you eat pieces of shit for breakfast in literal seconds of screen time.
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