Happy Gilmore isn't done with golf — not by a long shot. Since his retirement after his first Tour Championship win, Gilmore returns to finance his daughter's ballet classes.
Although I am a fan of Adam Sandler’s 90s comedies, I can’t say I had very high hopes for “Happy Gilmore 2,” a sequel to the 30-year-old classic. Even with lowered expectations, the movie is far from a hole in one. With genuine attempts to infuse heartfelt drama into a film loaded with nostalgic callbacks and Sandler’s signature juvenile humor, the result is mixed at best.
After a successful golf career and starting a family, Happy’s (Sandler) life takes a dark and tragic turn when he accidentally kills his wife Virginia (Julie Bowen) with an errant drive. Wracked with guilt, he spirals into alcoholism, loses his home, and winds up working a dead-end job while raising his youngest daughter, Vienna (Sunny Sandler). When an energy drink CEO (Benny Safdie) offers him a spot in a flashy new golf league, Happy reluctantly returns to the game with the hope of paying for Vienna’s expensive dream of attending ballet school in Paris.
It’s a solid setup for a redemption arc, and the emotional stakes are surprisingly heavy for a comedy. There are moments where Sandler shows real depth, especially as the older, worn-down version of Happy is a far cry from the loudmouth hothead we met in 1996. But the film struggles to balance that maturity with the comedy fans expect. Instead of evolving the humor, it leans too heavily on tired gags, lazy callbacks, and cameos that exist solely to poke the audience and say, “hey, remember this guy?”
There are some laughs to be found, but they are few and far between. Most of the script is clunky, the pacing drags in the first act, and too many jokes fall flat. Sandler’s decision to cast his real-life family yet again is more distracting than endearing, especially in a story that already feels emotionally uneven.
Where the original “Happy Gilmore” was a brash underdog sports comedy with a ton of personality, the sequel feels like it’s trying to be several things at once: tearjerker, comeback story, meta parody…and never quite commits to any of them. The emotional material is undercut by immature humor, and the comedy is weakened by the movie’s attempts at seriousness.
Despite a promising premise, “Happy Gilmore 2” is a frustrating, uneven sequel with a lot of missed potential. There’s a pulse of a good film buried somewhere in here, but the weak writing, sluggish pace, and over-reliance on nostalgia bury it.
