Happy Gilmore 2: The Comeback Of The OG Cringe-Comedy

Happy Gilmore 2 is perfectly awful in a way that resuscitates a reduced genre. Adam Sandler's return to basics reclaims the flailing identity of trigger-happy bad cinema. We need good bad movies.

Rahul+Desai

Jul 29, 2025

Promo poster for Happy Gilmore 2.

MODERN FILMMAKING has turned most of us into nostalgic old uncles. Just as we’ve been craving the return of tender love stories, quirky romcoms, proper dumb-action movies, purist superhero sagas and uncomplicated horror films, I’ve been yearning for the comeback of great bad movies. The Hollywood cringe comedy is one of the many genres that has devolved into farce over the last decade, particularly because the definition of a ‘terrible film’ has been altered by streaming platforms. Terrible films today are corporatised and soul-sucking ventures: lazy, formulaic and unfunny productions that don’t know that they're lazy, formulaic and unfunny — bloated space fillers in an age of content-over-cinema ambition. In other words, they’re literally terrible…and largely unwatchable.

Which is why it’s ironic that Netflix’s latest big release is an OG blast from the past — the long-awaited sequel to an iconically trashy Adam Sandler comedy from the 1990s. I remember watching Happy Gilmore in my pre-teens, during my golf-curious phase (I had convinced colony friends to play it as an alternative to cricket: with a hockey stick, dog hazards and customised holes in our garden). More than the sports spoof it was, Sandler became an awakening of sorts. He ushered in my understanding of how a bad movie is so much more than a bad movie — it’s a cultural reminder that we’re allowed to have fun at the expense of films that are willing to be silly and laugh at themselves. It’s similar to the so-bad-it's-good variety, except those like Happy Gilmore (and other Sandler toilet-humour, bottom-of-the-barrel comedies) savoured the opportunity to exist alongside the underdog fables of a generation.

When I heard about Happy Gilmore 2 dropping nearly three decades after the first, I felt a bit anxious about where the politically incorrect and gloriously offensive ‘franchise’ might land in the post-woke landscape. Or even if it can retain its original badness at a time even mediocrity has lost its sense of cinema. Thankfully, Happy Gilmore 2 is perfectly awful in a way that resuscitates a reduced genre. It’s not a hate watch; it’s a love-to-hate watch, where the viewer is encouraged to let their guard down, pull on their tattered pjs, crack childish puns and not be ashamed of their lowest-hanging-fruit sensibilities once in a while. Nobody can keep up the intellectual and art-needing front forever; we all need a break, even if it breaks us. What’s more, Sandler’s return as the freakishly crude golfer with a run-up swing, potty mouth and anger issues stays real to the template it parodied. 10 years after accidentally killing his loving wife with a wild golf shot, quitting the game, becoming a broke alcoholic and ‘raising’ 4 sons and a daughter, a 58-year-old Happy gets a second chance. He needs 300,000 dollars to put his only promising child — his teen daughter, Vienna — through ballet school in Paris. His 4 sons are proud no-hopers, a rowdy chip off the old block.

This time, the stakes are well-cooked: Happy must save the sport while saving himself. A rival cash-rich golf league called Maxi Golf is threatening to disrupt the future of the game, a not-so-fictional parallel to LIV Golf and its Saudi-backed threat to the classicality of the PGA Tour. In a poetic twist of fate, retro-disrupter Happy becomes the face and last hope of the traditional tour in a 5-on-5 match against the extreme-golf freaks (in Sandler Speak, these ‘new’ players have a ligament severed to drive the ball longer); his old rival Shooter McGavin is released from a mental institution to become an unlikely ally. The amusing thing about this sequel is that it capitalises on the popularity of the Netflix docu-series Full Swing (3 seasons old now), just as F1 mined the popularity of the docu-series F1: Drive to Survive. Motor sport gets Brad Pitt, and golf gets Adam Sandler (complimentary).

Top-tier male golfers — World no 1 Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka — become Happy’s teammates. These aren’t passing cameos, though; these famous athletes have full-bodied roles, complete with a tournament shootout, one-liners and ridiculous set pieces, making you wonder if Netflix simply added an extra clause in their non-fiction contract to make full use of the access. How did they even find the time? Scheffler, in particular, has so much screen-time that he qualifies in the supporting-actor category; the gag of him getting arrested (“not again”) during a tournament is milked to its last drop, turning the planet’s top-ranked golfer into something rare: a good sport. It’s also such a niche joke (only those who follow American golf or watch the docu-series will get it) that one almost admires Sandler and his co-producers for tapping into a market that merges pop-culture and OTT entertainment. The ‘other’ cameos include a post-Modern Family Julie Bowen (as Happy’s dead wife), Ben Stiller (continuing his role from the 1996 film), Eminem, John Daly, Bad Bunny, Margaret Qualley and a few more.

Psst... Modern Family is streaming on JioHotstar, now available with your OTTplay Premium subscription. Watch it here.

The running gag of Happy turning every object — pepper shakers, golf balls, remotes, clubs — into a secret liquor bottle is vintage Sandler. As is Haley Joel Osment, former child-actor extraordinaire, playing a meta-villain and bitter journeyman who subscribes to Maxi Golf after failing to make it as a ‘regular golfer’; the actor’s weirdly self-derogatory trajectory after The Sixth Sense is a biopic waiting to be made. There’s something to be said about Sandler’s conviction in the purism of crass storytelling. Just like Happy Gilmore returns to rescue a sport in danger of being usurped by capitalism posing as evolution, the veteran actor’s return to basics reclaims the flailing identity of trigger-happy bad cinema. We need good bad movies, just as we need masterpieces.

Watch more of Adam Sandler here!

There is some algorithmic dilution by Netflix (what with the excessive golf-ness of this one), but the film honours the spirit of the 1996 original by exploiting the rules of new-age rage-baiting. The flashing memory of the late Carl Weathers as “Chubbs” Peterson (his riff on his role as Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies) and the cute crocodile that bit his fingers off reminded me of another first: It was Happy Gilmore (1996) that triggered my long-time fondness for crocodiles, alligators and their slithery ilk. The shot of the croc waving from the sky with Chubbs will stay with me to my grave. I wouldn’t mind a threequel if the reptile descendants munch on a greedy Netflix executive, should the streaming platform ever develop a sense of humour of its own. Until then, of course, it’s “Netflix and chill” meets “Adam Sandler, smoke, pass”.

Happy Gilmore 2: The Comeback Of The OG Cringe-Comedy

Rahul+Desai

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