Details from IMDB:
Happy Gilmore 2
Revisit Happy Gilmore’s golf career after his win in the Tour Championship.
- Director
- Writers
- Stars
Initial Thoughts:
Happy Gilmore is one of the best Adam Sandler comedies, and one of the strangest, I re-watched it recently and find while it holds up, there are jokes in it you couldn’t do now, or so I thought. I was excited to hear about the sequel, and I appreciate the enthusiasm of both Travis and Jason Kelce to help promote both the movie and the latter’s part in it. For the first time ever Taylor Swift even mentioned a movie Travis was in, saying to see it “as soon as humanly possible”, in truth I wanted to see it anyway so then last night we did.
Main Points:
That was a long intro but I’m in that kind of mood outside here on a Sunday afternoon. The only movie critic I follow these days, Rebecca Frost from Geekshow, said not to bother but I couldn’t take her advice this time. I can see why critics don’t like this movie, it is in some sense a re-hash of the original and is filled to the brim with nostalgia, cameos and constant references/throwbacks to the first. They use the “remember this guy from the original? Well here’s his son!” too many times and even thought I was high I go bored, it could also lose a full half hour easily. Oh if you care about such things this is a SPOILER review.
Enough negative though, really what do you expect from an Adam Sandler movie? Sure he has done some serious stuff like “Uncut Gems” or “Punch Drunk Love” but that’s not his usual fare. The first movie was full of strange and ridiculous moments, and this one is too. I was waiting for Happy to have a showdown with Shooter McGavin and Hal L and I got both. Travis Kelce was funny and while I haven’t seen him in anything else, I can see he’s got potential to be a good actor, I appreciated his enthusiasm for this role. Julie Bowen is mostly wasted here and I didn’t like how Happy accidently killed her with a golf ball. It made the movie a little too serious at times and I didn’t like to see Happy crying by himself in a bathroom. I thought it was a nice touch that two of Sandler’s daughters are in this as well as his wife. There is a plot, he needs money for his daughter to go to ballet school and he’s a recovering alcoholic, but really it doesn’t matter. If you’re going to enjoy this movie get high (if you are old enough/legally allowed) and turn off the critical part of your brain. I laughed and when the movie started to drag I took a break and had another gummy, Happy wins the tournament and saves golf and we get another, and what should be the last, movie along with a fitting ending.
Final Thoughts:
Please don’t let your kids watch this, some sexual situations, lots of coarse language and some violence means ages 14+. This is not as good as a the first one but is still worth seeing. I can, however, only give it 6.5 out of 10, mostly because the constant returning of characters from part 1 does get stale and the second half gets really ridiculous. If you want a few laughs, love Adam Sandler and want to see what happens to Happy Gilmore I do give it a mild recommendation. There are a couple of really good laughs and I was surprised a couple of times, I think that’s about as good as it gets for 95% of his movies.