HAPPY GILMORE 2 - Mark Reviews Movies

Happy Gilmore 2, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 25, 2025

Things are not going well for Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) at the start of Happy Gilmore 2. He has lost his desire to golf, becomes a single father to five kids, goes broke, turns to alcohol, and is forgotten by three contestants on a TV quiz show. Also, he accidentally kills his wife Virgina (Julie Bowen) with a stray tee shot on Mother's Day, and it's a bit strange that she keeps showing up in flashbacks to the first movie's vision of her in Happy's "happy place," where she's wearing lingerie. Whatever the character might have been in between these two movies, her only purpose in them has been an ancillary "prize" to be won and to immediately die to serve as a plot device.

This doesn't come as too much a surprise, since the humor of the first Happy Gilmore was mostly about anger and some casual cruelty. It was slightly better than some of Sandler's earlier comedies that focused exclusively on his comedic persona at the time, at least, simply because it followed the tried-and-true formula of an underdog sports movie. Watching an amateur hockey player turn himself into a professional golfer was a fairly funny conceit.

The 29 years in between that movie and this belated, mostly unnecessary sequel have seen the actor's on-screen presence mellow and expand, and it might have been interesting to see how Sandler's own evolution as an actor could serve as a reflection of this character. As soon as Happy's wife is killed in the prologue of this movie, however, the chances of that happening pretty much come to an end.

The whole thing serves as a reset for the protagonist, whatever personal and professional progress he may have made over the years, and the narrative itself. Virginia's death is basically an excuse to make Happy angry and desperate again, so that the screenplay (by Sandler and Tim Herlihy, both of whom wrote the first movie) can basically repeat the plot of its predecessor. That makes the movie disheartening on two levels: first because of what the regression means for Happy and second because of how clearly uninspired the entire rationale for making the movie is.

Happy is in a slightly better place, if only because of those kids. His four sons (all named after hockey players) are pretty much younger versions of their father's younger, punch-happy self. His daughter Vienna (Sunny Sandler), though, is different. She wants to become a ballet dancer, and when an opportunity for her to go to dance school in Paris arises, Happy decides to get his act together to find the money to pay for her tuition.

It's a simple-enough idea, complicated and convoluted by a need to repeat the beats of the first movie, bring back as many previous characters and insert as many cameos as possible, and make the stakes even higher than before. The short of it is that Happy has to compete against golfers from a new league, started by energy drink magnate Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie), to win the prize money and save the sport of golf itself from an attempt to make it more exciting (The "updated" sport looks, ironically, quite dull).

The long of it is that this straightforward plot repeatedly stops to bring back characters like Ben Stiller's Hal (who now runs a questionable support group for recovering alcoholics) and Christopher McDonald's Shooter McGavin (who wants revenge on Happy, has a near-complete turnaround, goes back to vengeance, and is quickly fine with his old rival again), as well as to just show us clips from the first movie. Then, there are those cameos, which include real-life golfers across several generations, various other sports personalities (from athletes to commentators), and more former and current cast members of "Saturday Night Live" than one would expect (which is saying something for a Sandler movie). Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (better known by his stage name Bad Bunny) is pretty amusing as Happy's new caddy, a recently fired bus boy who keeps asking golfers if they need breadsticks but has a few tricks up his sleeve, too.

The whole of the movie has obviously been constructed around nostalgia and guest appearances, which is, perhaps, even lazier than the first movie's construction around sports-movie formula and Sandler tendency to yell a lot back in the day. Lost in this, of course, is any real sense of who Happy has been between movies and who he is now, apart from a milder version of the character in the original. Happy Gilmore 2 could have done something with that, but instead, it comes across as a random cavalcade of comedic ideas.

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