Gail Arneke
HAPPY GILMORE 2, directed by Kyle Newacheck, Happy Madison Productions, Netflix.
When I write reviews, I generally start by listing the cast. In the case of Happy Gilmore 2, a cast list would be longer than anyone would care to read. Suffice it to say that Happy Gilmore is played of course by Adam Sandler. Julie Bowen appears as his wife and Muse. Christopher McDonald plays Shooter McGavin, first a sworn enemy and later an ally of Happy’s.
John Daly plays a former golfer now living in Happy’s garage, drinking from a jug of hand sanitizer and dispensing good advice. Ben Stiller plays a crooked alcohol counselor. I’ll identify others as they come into play. Many are named Sandler.
Happy Gilmore 2 starts out some 20 years from 1996, the date of the original Happy movie. Having been a PGA Tour champion, Happy is now a troubled alcoholic. Not only did his game go to pieces, but he also lost his wife. She was hit in the head by an errant tee shot. I won’t say whose shot it was; you can guess.
Happy is now living in his Grandma’s house with his five children. Four boys (named Gordie, Wayne, Bobby and Terry) and a girl. Flashbacks show the boys fighting like a bunch of hockey players, among other not adorable pastimes. They are keen on visual penis jokes, and they will remain so in flashes throughout the movie, grabbing any handy length of hose, light saber or any other object and dancing around with it clutched between their legs. Not even cute.
In the present, the boys are working various jobs and supporting Happy and Vienna who are still at Grandma’s. Happy has a job as a stocker at a grocery store. He is approached one day (while drinking from a fake cucumber) by Frank Manatee (Bennie Shaf) who is starting a new golf league with more thrills and action than the Tour. He wants Happy to join his MAXI Golf league. Happy declines, loving the real style of golf played by the Tour.
Happy’s daughter, Vienna (Sunny Sandler), wants to be a dancer. Her teacher Monica (Jackie Sandler) encourages Happy to send her to a French ballet academy costing $75,000 per year. Vienna flits around the house in lithe dance steps and pleading eyes.
And so a plot is born. Much like Happy Gilmore 1 or even The Blues Brothers. We need money to make this kid’s cherished dream a reality. But how to do it?
Some people suggest practicing his game and not drinking, and Happy goes around the house emptying hidden liquor—hidden in a TV antenna, a pepper mill and several unlikely places.
John Daly seizes a jug of hand sanitizer, but Happy says it really is hand sanitizer. Daly drinks it for the rest of the film. He also advises Happy to start from the bottom and practice his way up. That goes poorly as Happy tries it.
First he attaches himself to three young people (Margaret Qually, Eric Andre, Martin Herlihy) playing on a public course. He checks in at the public course to employees played by Kelsey Plum and Andrew Webb. He still makes some great shots, but he also avails himself of the booze hidden in a golf club and things go downhill. He also manages to smash a golf cart and fight with its owner during his recovery.
Tried for the golf cart incident, a court rules that all charges will be dropped if Happy goes to alcohol rehabilitation meetings. At rehab Happy meets Hal L. the crooked leader of HAL, Healing Alkies for Life (Ben Stiller) and a very nice woman named Charlotte (Sadie Sandler). Rehabilitation goes well, and Happy’s golf improves. He is invited back to the Tour.
In a charming scene at the Tour restaurant, Harry finds his old caddy, Oscar (Bad Bunny) working as a busboy and being heckled by the waiter, a real jerk, played by Travis Kelce. Oscar and his cousin (Marcello Hernandez) dream of starting a restaurant, but they are getting nowhere fast. Guy Fieri is the chef. For reasons that escape me, a person in a bear costume walks into the restaurant.
The real action of the plot starts when the Tour and MAXI agree to a showdown, their five best players against each other. In a match to find the Tour’s top five, Happy comes in sixth. Agony prevails, as the winning side will get enough money to let Vienna go to ballet school. Then one of the five, Billy Jenkins (Haley Joel Osmet) confesses that he has joined MAXI and is thrown off the Tour team. Happy is in. The Tour team is Byron DeChambeau, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Scottie Scheffler and Happy.
If MAXI is meant to be a satirical play on the LIV enterprise, or even if not, it is hilarious. MAXI has created a golf course that looks like a computer game. The greens are about 400 yards from the tees, and jungles, mountains, and other huge hazards must be overcome to get to them. No problem for the MAXI players Oliver Hudson, Fernando Marrero (playing a guy named Screech for reasons that will be obvious), Flex (Becky Lynch) and Reggie Bush as 8-Ball. They have all had a ligament removed from their backs so that swing is impossibly strong.
The Tour has its problems, even apart from the course. Brooks Koepka is injured and replaced by Shooter McGavin in a heroic “just put me in, Coach” moment. Scottie Scheffler punches an opponent and is hauled off to the local jail, where he shares a cell with the HAL crook, Ben Stiller. They proceed to watch the match on TV.
After a few more shenanigans, the match will be decided in a bizarre putting contest between Happy and Billy (the turncoat Tour to MAXI player).
If Happy wins, he will get enough money to send Vienna to the Paris school, buy Oscar and his cousin a restaurant and buy himself an electric car. If he loses he has to agree to play for MAXI. Guess who wins and forgets to charge his new car before taking all his kids to the airport to go to Paris with Vienna, making him walk home.