Twenty nine years after he first appeared in Dennis Dugan's original film, Adam Sandler's pro golfer Happy Gilmore is back on our screens.
'Happy Gilmore 2' sees Sandler return as the ice hockey fanatic turned unconventional golf pro in Kyle Newacheck's Netflix sequel.
But does the comedy written by Sandler and Tim Herlihy justify a second outing?
The first 'Happy Gilmore' film was a modest comedy hit that developed a cult status when top golf pros started to champion it and even mimic the character's eccentric ice hockey slapshot swing.
Newacheck's star studded sequel, however, finds Happy on a downswing after his hugely successful golf career comes to a screeching halt on Mother's Day.
Unleashing another one of his trademark monster drives, he accidentally kills the love of his life and mother of his five children, Julie Bowen's Virginia Venit Gilmore in a tournamebt.
Tormented by her death, Happy gives up golf, loses the family home and starts hitting the bottle while raising four rambunctious, ice hockey crazy boys and a ballet mad daughter in a rundown, blue collar neighbourhood.
Two time Major winner John Daly also lives with the family as a hermit in their garage.
Working in a supermarket, Happy sneaks alcohol inside cucumbers and regularly falls foul of the law.
Approached one day at work by Bennie Safdie's successful energy drink manufacturer Frank Manatee, the entrepreneur who has foul breath tells him how he was a huge fan of his rebel spirit and pitches to him an idea to really shake up golf turning it into a team sport.
Manatee is taken back when Happy rejects the idea because it is an affront to the sport that Virginia loved and he is unceremoniously dumped by the golf icon into a tank full of lobsters.
Returning home, Happy is told by Jackie Sandler's dance teacher Monica that his daughter and young child, Sunny Sandler's Vienna has a raw talent that needs nurtured in ballet school but it will cost $75,000.
Determined to get the money and buy back his grandma's home, Happy is motivated to return to the sport at the prestigious Tour Championship which he won multiple times.
However before he bids for another golden jacket, he returns to the local municipal golf course to get his mojo back and plays with Eric Andre, Martin Herlihy and Margaret Qualley's trio of young amateur golfers who initially don't realise they're in the presence of a legend.
For much of the round, Happy sucks - hitting air shots and driving into bunkers and trees.
As the round progresses, he starts to swig liquor hidden in his golf clubs, golf balls and just gets worse until on one tee he unleashes his trademark drive, with the group suddenly realising who he is.
Excited to be in his presence of a legend (if slightly disappointed he is an alcoholic), the group's outing ends in disaster when Happy causes a spectacular golf cart crash that ends up being broadcast on a tabloid TV show that revels in celebrities' misfortunes.
Sent to an AA meeting, Happy is surprised to find it is led by Ben Stiller's former retirement home orderly Hal Lieberman from the first movie who remains as abusive as ever.
Believing he is ready to return to the PGA Tour, Happy turns up at the Golden Jacket Tour Championship champions dinner where the sports's elite like Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo, Fred Couples, Jordan Spieth, Ricky Fowler and Xander Schauffele welcome him back with open arms.
Reunited with Dennis Dugan's PGA tour commissioner Doug Thompson, he and the other guests are told that Manatee's golf league has thrown down the gauntlet to the PGA tour to take them on in their souped up golf team format, with the top five in the Tour Championship representing the official tour.
The prize is protecting the very soul of the sport itself, with Manatee's league taking over golf if his team wins.
With Manatee securing the release from an asylum of Happy's old nemesis, Shooter McGavin and our hero also battling his demons, can he join forces with Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka and Bryson de Chambeau to save the integrity of the game?
If you saw 'Happy Gilmore' 29 years ago or even recently and fell in love with Sandler's brash, shouty humour, the likelihood is that you'll adore this sequel.
If, however, you fall into the opposite camp, the chances are you will find 'Happy Gilmore 2' insufferable.
Sandler's brand of comedy has always had the subtlety of a breeze block.
It's loud. It's over the top. His jokes are flogged to death.
'Happy Gilmore 2' is no different, with gags about Happy's inventive ways of hiding alcohol, the prosthetic hand of Lavell Crawford's Slim Petersen whose one armed father mentored Happy in the original and Manatee's bad breath repeated and nauseam.
The sequel is no better nor worse than the original - it just is.
Although it is rather amusing and telling to see Bowen in one scene questioning the sexism of one fantasy sequence in the 1996 movie where her character wore lingerie while holding two pitchers of beer.
If there is a big difference between the two movies, it's the phalanx of celebrities in this film - especially golf pros who make cameo appearances in the movie.
The 1996 movie had just the six time Major winner Lee Trevino, Mark Lye and the sportscaster Verne Lundquist.
Trevino is back for this one too, with Will Zalatoris, Tony Finau, US Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley, Jim Furyk, Sergio Garcia, Collin Morikawa, Hunter Mahan, Corey Pavin, Justin Thomas appearing in the film as themselves alongside Charley Hull from the women's game.
Nicklaus, Faldo, Couples, Scheffler, McIlroy, Koepka, De Chambeau, Spieth, Fowler, Schauffele, Thomas and Will Zalatoris are given lines to deliver and every single one of them are pretty wooden.
It has to be said, though, that against all odds, former USPGA and Open champion John Daly actually proves to be a natural.
You can't help feeling, though, that Sandler and his director Kyle Newacheck probably missed a trick not inviting Padraig Harrington to take part - the one Major winner who has actually trialled on tour the Happy Gilmore swing.
Unlike the original, Newacheck, Sandler and his co-writer Herlihy throw some well chosen, knowing gags about golf into the mix.
The film sends up four time Major winner and 2025 Open champion Scottie Scheffler's surprising brush with the law before last year's USPGA Championship.
Manatee's Maxi Golf League is also a smart parody of the breakaway Saudi Arabian backed LIV Golf tour which split the sport and also Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy indoor arena TGL golf league which has tried to make the sport more attractive to younger, video game obsessed fans.
As in the original, the movie still very belongs to Sandler - although, at the age of 58, he's a bit more dialled down and not as shouty as before.
With Bowen quickly dispatched from the film, a lot of responsibility falls on the shoulders of McDonald, Safdie, Stiller, Crawford, Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio as his clueless caddy Oscar Mejas and Haley Joel Osment as a surgically enhanced pro Billy Jenkins who can drive the ball as far as Happy and is the poster boy for the Maxi Golf League.
All of them do their bit, with McDonald, Safdie and Osment emerging the star players even if they never overshadow Sandler.
Other cameos from the likes of Eminem as the son of the heckler from the first movie, Travis Kelce as Oscar's abusive boss in the Tour Champions restaurant, Qualley, Steve Buscemi in a nothing role as a hopeless neighbour, Rob Schneider in a dream sequence, womens pro legends Nelly Korda and Nancy Lopez as doctors and Kevin Nealon as the former pro Gary Potter are all a bit pointless and distracting.
If you're worried about not having seen the original, don't be because Newacheck peppers his movie with loads of callbacks to gags in the 1996 movie and clips.
Will 'Happy Gilmore 2' be a huge streaming hit for Netflix?
Probably.
Does it make a plausible case for 'Happy Gilmore 3'?
No but I wouldn't rule that out because, like golf, money generated in the movie industry talks.
The question is, though, do we really need to see Happy Gilmore shake up the Seniors Tour?
God forbid.
('Happy Gilmore 2' was made available for streaming on Netflix on July 26, 2025)
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