Movie Review: Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)

[Dave Gray]

Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)

Premise: A former golfer down on life picks up his clubs in order to right things and fight for the traditions of the very sport he turned on its head.

Rating: Good when original, but seldom original.

If you're a Happy Gilmore fan, you'll watch this for 2 hours and be entertained by it....and then likely never think of it again.  It's a shame, but it's designed that way.  Happy Gilmore 2 is an absolute slave to the first film.  It's one thing to have nostalgia and callbacks, but this movie is a redux of every character and joke from the first film.  They actually retell the same jokes to the point that it's weird.  It's the same jokes....the same visual gags done exactly the same.  Every side character, if not represented directly, is brought back in the form of their child, who has the same personality, traits and dress as their parent.  Short of the previous villain, Shooter McGavin, who has a bit of an arc, every single character is a static off-shoot from the previous film.

There is a version of this film in my head where Happy loses his groove, so he slavishly tries to recreate the circumstances in which he had his mojo, which leads him to seek out all of the old favorites.  That would probably be dumb, but at least there would be a reason for it and would give you an opportunity to subvert expectations.  Chubb's son, for example -- it's just another, younger actor playing Chubbs again.  Same fake hand, made of the same material, breaking the same way from a handshake, being repaired with wood glue and duct tape, just like in the first movie.  Even if you were going to do that -- surprise us with it being a fake foot....or make the hand some kind of space-age polymer with gadgets in it where he's breaking things with it all the time.  There are ways to call-back the joke without literally re-telling the joke.  This is true for every character and every joke.

The movie goes very deep with its references, too.  It's not just the big actors -- it's all the small roles, too.  And unless you literally watched the first movie and it's fresh on the brain, while also following the career of these actors, you won't get the references, so the movie has to replay scenes from the first film before it does the joke again.  It's offputting and makes Happy Gilmore 2 have no identity of its own.

But...

What is new is great.  It's so strange.  Almost every new aspect of the movie is fun and I loved it, which I didn't expect.  Happy's children are fun and hilarious and supportive, yet stupid and immature versions of him.  The way that the movie uses real life golfers (particularly John Daly) is really funny.  The actual plot is about a new type of golf (which has a lot of similarities to  the SoFi Center's TGL golf) kinda mixed with that LIV golf league that poached some PGA players -- it's a bit timely and insightful.  There's something to be said about getting old and embracing traditions that you used to buck.  There's actual meat on the bone when the movie chooses to use it.  And there are some funny moments associated with it.  Happy's "happy place" used to be his hot girlfriend bringing him two pitchers of beer, but now it's something more appropriate for a dude in his 50s.  Funny, but true.  The movie's main villain is good and different.  Happy's new caddy, played by Bad Bunny, gave me a lot of laughs, too.  There's a lot of new stuff that's great; I just wish it was the whole of the movie.

And cameos.  Holy shit, the cameos.  It's every golfer ever, old and new.  That's kinda fine because this is a love letter to golf.  As I previously mentioned, John Daly makes fun of himself pretty well and there are some younger golfers with stuff to do that provide laughs, as well as older players.  I was fine with all of it, though egregious, because of the context.  Where I found it distracting was stunt casting for pretty much everything else.  You have every ESPN type sportscaster (fine).  That's understandable.  You also have famous people who aren't traditionally actors (like Travis Kelce and Bad Bunny) but in meaty enough roles that I didn't have an issue with it.  You also have actors that are probably too famous to play as small of roles as they're in, but hey....that's fine too.  I bet a bunch of actors grew up loving this movie and were happy to be in it.  But then, there's like....2 second scenes with rappers and non-actor personalities to the point that I was turned off: Guy Fieri, Eminem, Post Malone....there are a bunch of other people who were obviously famous rappers or personalities but I didn't know them.

So, overall -- net negative, I guess.  I didn't hate it, but it's too long at 2 hours for callback fart jokes.  I just think it's a shame that we didn't get a true sequel because we got a "member-berry" movie, yet what it did do originally was wonderful and I'm sorry we didn't get an entire movie of that.  If you have to literally replay a scene from a previous film before your current scene, so that people will find it funny, you've gone overboard.

[CF DolFan]

I heard that it is just a 2 hour call back to the original. I haven't seen it yet but will soon.