When will Hollywood learn to leave a good comedy alone? Zoolander 2 and Anchorman: The Legend Continues should have been proof enough that not every comedy character needs further adventures, especially when they left the zeitgeist a long time ago. Films like 22 Jump Street and The Hangover, regardless of what you think of them, knew to strike when the iron was hot, now when the iron was sitting on a thrift store shelf. Happy Gilmore 2 comes to us as part of Adam Sandler’s never-ending Netflix deal a mere 29-years after everyone’s favorite rage-fueled golfer did ‘pretty well’ at the box office. While the film has grown over the years and is now considered a cult classic, I don’t know that anyone was beating down Sandler’s door for a sequel to a film that clearly didn’t need one. Yes, we might have loved the characters and quoted them endlessly, but I certainly wasn’t clamoring for more. Why? Happy Gilmore 2 is why, a sequel so terrible that it makes the original 1996 film worse by its existence.
I’ve never seen a film this laughably shameless in its fan service. There was never a script so great that it got the project a green light. It was all about bringing back everything from the original film and not even trying to make it more contemporary. Almost every single callback to the original film is accompanied by a clip from the 1996 picture, because an audience that wanted a sequel surely cannot remember what happened previously? And, each and every time it happens, the joke is ruined. Because the original film did it better, and because you’ve now reminded us of that. Director Kyle Newacheck should be sent to director jail immediately for even allowing that nonsense. He does a pitiful job here.
At least Dennis Dugan (who returns here in an acting capacity) knew how to tap into the Sandler weirdness of the time. Sandler isn’t weird anymore – he’s just a grown man who still does silly voices. Except in Happy Gilmore 2, a comedy that thought the emotional thru-line should be grief and aging. Because that is what we want in a Happy Gilmore sequel – a memorandum on death. It would be like someone releasing a Billy Madison sequel all about Billy’s autistic son. Even the idea of killing Virginia (Julie Benz) off so early feels mean-spirited and unnecessary. And I certainly didn’t care about Happy’s grief. How are we supposed to care about a character whose entire identity up until that point was based around being as juvenile and violent and rage-fueled as a person can be? Some humor is mined from Happy’s four hyper-masculine sons who are clearly following in their dad’s aggressive footsteps, and from the inclusion of retired professional golfer, John Daly, as their alcoholic roommate.
The reunion everyone has been waiting for here is Happy and Shooter (Christopher McDonald), who has been living in a mental hospital since the events of the original film. McDonald does bring some much needed energy to the film, but it’s still a major disappointment. The rivals get a funny enough fight sequence in a cemetery where every dead character from the first film seems to be buried for some reason, and I wish that kind of slapstick humor had been more present throughout the film, rather than a litany of Sandler’s friends and returning characters that add nothing whatsoever to what we’re experiencing. Having Happy and Shooter team up makes sense and works in the long run, but did we really need to know what the son of the “Jackass” guy was up to? And did we need Eminem to play him? Sandler really needed someone telling him when enough was enough. Like Stiller with Zoolander 2, Sandler gets lost in his own sauce and never really seems to care about telling a compelling story.
I hated Happy Gilmore 2. Adam Sandler has disrespected the legacy of the first film and has hit rock bottom with this lazy, bored attempt at resurrecting the old flavor. I laughed maybe five times in the entire film, and it never had anything to do with Happy himself, a character they’ve now turned into a sad, depressive sad sack who doesn’t seem to belong in his own world. Everything happens exactly the way you’d expect, with zero surprises. But it’s those horrific flashbacks that take this from being just another bad film to being a film that truly disrespects its audience, losing all the good will the original film engendered. You can’t trick us into thinking the original film is the sequel. You can’t trick us into embracing something you yourself cannot seem to embrace. Happy Gilmore 2 is the reason Hollywood comedies are dying. It might not be fair to place all the blame on Sandler, but this film proves – he deserves it.
RATING: */***** (now streaming exclusively on Netflix)
